Yahoo Autos Verstappen stays ahead but Ferrari closes gap in second British GP practice
Max Verstappen doubled down on his Friday practice advantage with another session-topping time in FP2 for the British Grand Prix.
Verstappen lowered his FP1 benchmark by more than half a second to string together his best time of 1m28.078s. But his advantage over the field was much reduced compared to the earlier session, with Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz lapping just 0.022s slower and pinching the fastest time in the final sector.
It was a promising result for the cautiously optimistic Italian team after applying a raft of upgrades to the car in recent rounds.
The Spaniard was the lone Ferrari to take part in second practice after teammate Charles Leclerc’s SF-23 developed an electrical problem that prevented him from leaving his garage. It was a serious blow to the Monegasque, particularly given the elevated risk of rain on Saturday. He had been the fractionally faster Ferrari in FP1.
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Alex Albon’s sizzling Friday form continued with another third-fastest time just 0.218s adrift in his low-drag Williams machine. The Thai driver never slipped more than 0.09s to Verstappen in any sector, and he was within 0.05s of Verstappen in the final split, which starts at the Hangar straight.
His teammate, Logan Sargeant, was similarly impressive to put his Williams fifth, although the American rookie was more than 0.4s slower.
The Williams duo sandwiched Sergio Perez into fourth in the second Red Bull Racing machine, the Mexican 0.264s slower than his teammate.
Lance Stroll slogged his way to sixth for Aston Martin, suffering a wing mirror failure along the way before having one of his fingers painfully struck by an errant stone kicked up from one of the gravel traps.
Nico Hulkenberg was a strong seventh for Haas ahead of Pierre Gasly and an impressive Oscar Piastri. Fernando Alonso completed the top 10 after having debris cleared from his front-left brake duct early in the hour.
Zhou Guanyu made a mid-session steering wheel change on his way to 11th ahead of George Russell in the first of the wayward Mercedes cars.
Russell was 1.1s off the pace in a car he described as “sliding all over the track” regardless of the tire compound. The final part of his hour was occupied by undertaking more aerodynamic testing on the team’s new front wing.
Teammate Lewis Hamilton fared worse down in 15th, albeit only 0.045s further back, the older Briton similarly reporting a lack of grip. Esteban Ocon and Lando Norris split the Mercedes cars in 13th and 14th respectively.
Valtteri Bottas was 16th ahead of Kevin Magnussen and AlphaTauri teammates Yuki Tsunoda and Nyck de Vries, the latter having suffered a right-front puncture on his way back to pit lane at the end of the session.
