George Russell led a Mercedes one-two in second practice for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, setting a 43.347 to put himself half a second ahead of Kimi Antonelli. The Mercedes duo had a comfortable advantage, with Max Verstappen eight tenths off Russell and nearly three tenths behind the championship leader.<\/p>\n
Russell maintained the form that had seen him top the day’s earlier first practice session to stay at the head of the timesheet, this time with a half-second advantage around the challenging streets of Baku. Antonelli was compromised throughout Thursday, due to the hydraulic leak that stopped his car midway through the opening session.<\/p>\n
The Englishman went into the weekend admitting that, despite being second in the championship, his title bid was realistically over, but he was in the form to win races again. Russell hasn\u2019t won a race since Spielberg three months ago, but has finished on the podium in Baku in three of the past four years.<\/p>\n
Verstappen had been the closest challenger to Russell in FP1 after the Italian lost half of both sessions because of hydraulic failure. But during the second part of FP2 made up for lost time, though he still ended Thursday with half the amount of running as Russell, as is to be expected, but Antonelli is likely to close in on Friday in the run-up to qualifying.<\/p>\n
Mercedes spent the first half-hour of the second session finishing off the repair to Antonelli’s car, which involved an engine change. That meant he had to go straight into his performance runs on the soft tyre, having missed set-up and development time at the end of the first hour and the beginning of the second.<\/p>\n
Charles Leclerc put his Ferrari just under two tenths behind Verstappen, as the Monegasque went just over a tenth and a half faster than teammate Lewis Hamilton. However, both Ferraris were a second off the outright pace set by Russell, but the seven-time champion was over a tenth and a half faster than Lando Norris.<\/p>\n
But the McLaren\u2019s drivers\u2019 focus appeared to be on optimising the team\u2019s upgrades; that meant that he didn\u2019t get in a representative time. Norris went a hundredth faster than Pierre Gasly, the Frenchman splitting the McLaren duo as he went a hundredth faster than Oscar Piastri.<\/p>\n
Piastri was himself a hundredth faster than Isack Hadjar, the Frenchman completing the top four teams a second and a half. But both McLarens were running a makeshift solution to their FP1 floorboard issues in the form of plastic cable ties. While Esteban Ocon completed the top ten just over four tenths behind.<\/p>\n
Franco Colapinto missed out on the top ten by just under two tenths, with the second Alpine going just over two tenths faster than Liam Lawson, while Sergio Perez put himself ahead of the Audis. Gabriel Bortoletto went six hundredths faster than teammate Nico Hulkenberg.<\/p>\n
Followed by the Williams duo, who were a quarter of a second off, Alex Albon just under a tenth faster than his teammate Carlos Sainz. Arvid Lindblad was the first to find the wall and bring out the red flag when he crashed after misjudging himself and tagging the wall through the castle section, which left the Racing Bulls driver almost two tenths behind.<\/p>\n
Valtteri Bottas was six and a half hundredths faster than Ollie Bearman, the Haas driver\u2019s session coming to a halt as the session resumed following the red flag. \u201cMy engine switched off and just\u2026 broke,\u201d sighed Bearman, who managed to park his car at the end of an escape road and make the marshals\u2019 job easier.<\/p>\n
The two Aston Martins completed the field, Lance Stroll going nearly half a second faster than Fernando Alonso, who suffered from a suspected oil leak which limited his running.<\/p>\n
This weekend\u2019s race takes place on Saturday because Sunday is Azerbaijan’s Remembrance Day, marking the anniversary of the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia.<\/p>\n
George Russell led a Mercedes one-two in second practice for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, setting a 43.347 to put himself half a second ahead of Kimi Antonelli. The Mercedes duo had a comfortable advantage, with Max Verstappen eight tenths off Russell and nearly three tenths behind the championship leader. Russell maintained the form that had<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":15452,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[2339,233,234,235,249,2386,390,709,767,2252,1283,1298,1571,1637,2344,1642,1794],"class_list":["post-16459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-session-reports","tag-2339","tag-azerbaijan","tag-azerbaijan-gp","tag-azerbaijan-grand-prix","tag-baku","tag-baku-city-circiut","tag-charles-leclerc","tag-ferrari","tag-fp2","tag-kimi-antonelli","tag-max-verstappen","tag-mercedes","tag-practice-report","tag-red-bull","tag-red-bull-ford","tag-red-bull-racing","tag-second-practice"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16459","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16459"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16460,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16459\/revisions\/16460"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}