Bottas edges Hamilton in second British GP practice

Valtteri Bottas headed up a one-two finish for Mercedes in second practice for the British Grand Prix on Friday at Silverstone, narrowly beating teammate Lewis Hamilton to set the fastest time of the session.

After finishing second-quickest in FP1, Bottas was able to continue his strong showing on Friday to head the field through FP2 with a best lap time of 1m26.732s.

Bottas had set the quickest time on the Medium-compound tyre before making the switch to Softs, but initially failed to improve on his best effort after a scruffy first qualifying simulation run.

The Finn managed to find time on his second push lap on the Softs to open up a 0.069s gap to Hamilton in second place that remained to the end of the session. Bottas lost some track time after Mercedes was forced to change a spark plug on his car as a precaution, but returned to the track fairly swiftly once the switch had been made.

Hamilton himself struggled on his qualifying simulation, failing to match Bottas' Medium-tyre pace and then making a mistake exiting Becketts on his second push lap, leaving the five-time world champion in second place.

Ferrari remained within striking distance of Mercedes at the front as Charles Leclerc took third place, two-tenths of a second shy of Bottas's best time, with teammate Sebastian Vettel ending the day fourth-fastest.

FP1 leader Pierre Gasly once again finished as the lead Red Bull driver in fifth place after teammate Max Verstappen could only finish seventh-fastest, the pair split by McLaren's Lando Norris.

Carlos Sainz underlined Norris's good pace by finishing eighth in the sister McLaren, while Toro Rosso's Alexander Albon and Racing Point's Sergio Perez completed the top 10.

Daniel Ricciardo was forced to park his car up at the side of the track in the final 15 minutes after an engine issue, albeit using one of the older-spec units ahead of a planned switch to a Spec-B engine on Saturday, meaning no penalty will be triggered.

The other driver to hit trouble in FP2 was George Russell, who missed the second half of the session due to a gearbox issue that the team is set to investigate tonight.

Running resumes at 11am on Saturday at Silverstone with Free Practice 3 ahead of qualifying.