Bottas leads Mercedes one-two in Spain FP2
Valtteri Bottas continued to set the pace for Mercedes in second practice for the Spanish Grand Prix on Friday afternoon, edging out teammate Lewis Hamilton by a fine margin.
After heading the field in opening practice at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya earlier in the day, Bottas once again rose to the top of the timesheets in FP2 as he led Mercedes to a one-two finish.
Bottas turned in a fastest lap time of 1m17.284s to beat Hamilton by just 0.049 seconds, with Mercedes pulling out a healthy gap over the rest of the chasing pack.
Valtteri Bottas continued to set the pace for Mercedes in second practice for the Spanish Grand Prix on Friday afternoon, edging out teammate Lewis Hamilton by a fine margin.
After heading the field in opening practice at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya earlier in the day, Bottas once again rose to the top of the timesheets in FP2 as he led Mercedes to a one-two finish.
Bottas turned in a fastest lap time of 1m17.284s to beat Hamilton by just 0.049 seconds, with Mercedes pulling out a healthy gap over the rest of the chasing pack.
Charles Leclerc took P3 for Ferrari in second practice, but finished three-tenths of a second adrift from Bottas’ benchmark time.
Leclerc’s teammate Sebastian Vettel was almost four-tenths of a second back from Bottas come the end of the session, leaving Ferrari with ground to make up heading into the remainder of the weekend.
Hamilton was not entirely satisfied with the performance of his car through FP2, though, reporting late in the session that something "felt wrong" as he visibly struggled to get it turned in for a number of corners.
Max Verstappen bounced back from his oil leak in FP1 to finish the session fifth for Red Bull as the Spec 2 Honda power unit made its on-track debut.
Romain Grosjean finished as the leading midfield driver in sixth for Haas ahead of Pierre Gasly in the second Red Bull. Gasly had a close on-track moment with Renault’s Daniel Ricciardo on the run down to Turn 1 late in the session, but contact was avoided.
Kevin Magnussen wound up eighth overall for Haas ahead of McLaren’s Carlos Sainz, while Daniil Kvyat rounded out the top 10 positions for Toro Rosso.
Final practice for the Spanish Grand Prix begins at 12pm local time on Saturday (11am BST).
