Charles Leclerc was fastest in the second practice session ahead of the Spanish Grand Prix. The Monacan set a 19.670 which put him a tenth ahead of the two Mercedes, with George Russell going almost nine-hundredths of a second faster than teammate Lewis Hamilton.<\/p>\n
Leclerc goes into this weekend leading the championship, he improved by just over a tenth and a half from his from his FP1 time on the medium but was six tenths off the fastest time in testing set by Hamilton. But Leclerc\u2019s fastest time was set on a competitive soft qualifying sim, in which he had a sizeable gap to teammate Carlos Sainz and title rival Max Verstappen.<\/p>\n
Mercedes have appeared to make a big step forwards with the upgrade package in Barcelona, being the closest they have been to Ferrari all season. However the question will be how does the step forwards in pace and performance carry into qualifying on Saturday, and the porpoising issue they struggled with all season appears to be resolved.<\/p>\n
Ferrari has also made their first significant upgrade of the season, the centrepiece of which is a new floor. Red Bull are however taking an incremental approach to upgrades while they continue to try and reduce the weight of the car. Upgrades also were brought by Aston Martin, McLaren and Alfa Romeo<\/p>\n
At the same time, comparing the data from this race with that from pre-season testing may allow Mercedes to draw some conclusions as to whether they need to rethink their entire design concept, which is different from any other car.<\/p>\n
Russell’s soft-tyre lap was just 0.117s slower than Leclerc’s while Hamilton was a tenth further back, with Mercedes enjoying a rare positive day. Meanwhile Hamilton was late onto the soft tyre, but that didn\u2019t stop him going a tenth ahead of Sainz, and a hundredth and a half ahead of Verstappen.<\/p>\n
On paper, depending on how it turns out in qualifying it could be a three-way battle for pole, though Mercedes has made progress there will be still a few questions about whether when in qualifying they can fight for pole and victory, but the chances of a six consecutive win is unlikely.<\/p>\n
Hamilton said \u201cIt was positive. I am super happy with the progress so a big, big thank you to everyone back at the factory for not giving up and continuing to push. We are not the quickest yet but we are on our way. That is the first time we have driven down the straight without bouncing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mercedes also looked genuinely competitive on Friday at the last race in Miami but slipped back to their usual position as the third-fastest team in qualifying and race.<\/p>\n
Behind Verstappen was Fernando Alonso, the Spaniard was almost two tenths behind the dutchman, as well as being almost four tenths ahead of Sergio Perez. The Alpine driver once again proves that the French manufacturer when it can get the car set up right can be competitive in the higher end of the midfield.<\/p>\n
Sebastian Vettel was eighth a second off the pace, Aston Martin again in the spotlight after Red Bull lodged concerns about the similarities to their car. The four-time champion was four hundredths faster than Esteban Ocon and Mick Schumacher.<\/p>\n
Pierre Gasly split the two Haas\u2019s going almost a tenth faster than Kevin Magnussen. Lance Stroll put his Aston Martin thirteenth, he was a quarter of a second slower than the Hass, with Yuki Tsunoda going fourteenth.<\/p>\n
McLaren also appeared to struggle with Daniel Ricciardo going fifteenth fastest, another team possibly scratching their heads given the recovery from Bahrain and their strong showing in testing. Valtteri Bottas put his Alfa Romeo sixteenth, going almost four hundredths faster than teammate Guanyu Zhou.<\/p>\n
However Bottas\u2019s session would end early on, he was forced to stop at Turn One because of a mechanical failure.<\/p>\n
Lando Norris finished twentieth, the McLaren driver could only manage six laps before he ran wide, the damage caused when he went through the gravel at Turn Six.<\/p>\n
Charles Leclerc was fastest in the second practice session ahead of the Spanish Grand Prix. The Monacan set a 19.670 which put him a tenth ahead of the two Mercedes, with George Russell going almost nine-hundredths of a second faster than teammate Lewis Hamilton. Leclerc goes into this weekend leading the championship, he improved by<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7312,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[51,254,417,765,767,1368,1572,1573,1873,1874],"class_list":["post-10596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-race-reports","tag-51","tag-barcelona","tag-circuit-de-barcelona-catalunya","tag-fp","tag-fp2","tag-montmelo","tag-practice-reports","tag-practice-two","tag-spanish-gp","tag-spanish-grand-prix"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}