Lewis Hamilton topped the times by .09 of a second over his Mercedes team-mate Valtteri Bottas in the second practice ahead of the Spanish Grand Prix.<\/p>\n
The Mercedes driver once again used the upgraded silver arrow to put a three-tenths gap between himself and the Ferrari of Kimi Raikkonen in third. Mercedes have been working on rebuilding their slight edge over the Ferrari since March.<\/p>\n
However, the gap between the two has closed up, with just three tenths between the top three cars. Raikkonen\u2019s team-mate Sebastian Vettel was .11 of a second between them. While Red Bull\u2019s Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo were fifth and six.<\/p>\n
That will be seen as progress for Red Bull, as the gap has narrowed between them, Mercedes and Ferrari. However, Mercedes appear still to have the edge on the single lap pace while Ferrari appears to be better on the race pace.<\/p>\n
Mercedes slight edge appears to be found in the slower final sector of the track.<\/p>\n
All the teams have brought their first significant upgrades of the season. But, the Mercedes upgrade has been the\u00a0most visually dramatic, with a new narrower nose and a number of other major changes, and so far it appears to be having a significant effect.<\/p>\n
The Red Bull upgrades haven’t delivered enough for them to get as close as they would have liked.<\/p>\n
But Raikkonen\u2019s long runs was interrupted briefly when he was called into the pits with a suspected engine problem, after being instructed to use the part throttle, but driving through and straight back out on track.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t a trouble-free afternoon for Verstappen either, as a \u2018gust of wind\u2019 blew him off track and through the gravel trap.<\/p>\n
Fernando Alonso\u2019s tough season showed no sign of ended. After returning to the circuit, he lost half an hour while McLaren completed an engine change. But, the change didn\u2019t mean he improved his pace, finishing the afternoon nineteenth.<\/p>\n
Alonso ranted on the radio at one stage that: “The engine feels good. Much slower than before. Amazing.”<\/p>\n
Renault was not far behind the Red Bull\u2019s, with Nico Hulkenberg in seventh and being the last driver within a second of Hamilton. His team-mate Jolyon Palmer was only three tenths down but had two-thousandths of a second over Williams\u2019s Felipe Massa.<\/p>\n
Toro Rosso\u2019s Carlos Sainz rounded off the top ten, that was despite causing the only red flag of the afternoon. Sainz shattered his front wing after hitting a kerb.<\/p>\n
While Alonso was slowest, team-mate Stoffel Vandoorne slotted his McLaren in between the Force India\u2019s of Esteban Ocon and Sergio Perez.<\/p>\n
RELATED<\/strong><\/p>\n Lewis Hamilton topped the times by .09 of a second over his Mercedes team-mate Valtteri Bottas in the second practice ahead of the Spanish Grand Prix. The Mercedes driver once again used the upgraded silver arrow to put a three-tenths gap between himself and the Ferrari of Kimi Raikkonen in third. Mercedes have been working<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[43,254,369,493,496,647,699,709,741,742,882,885,1068,1115,1130,1227,1283,1298,1422,1495,1637,1639,1642,1656,1707,1770,1773,1791,1811,1843,1873,1874,2025,2105,2149,2152],"class_list":["post-3742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-race-reports","tag-43","tag-barcelona","tag-carlos-sainz-jr","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-daniil-kvyat","tag-esteban-ocon","tag-felipe-massa","tag-ferrari","tag-force-india","tag-force-india-mercedes","tag-haas","tag-haas-ferrari","tag-jolyon-palmer","tag-kimi-raikkonen","tag-lance-stroll","tag-marcus-ericsson","tag-max-verstappen","tag-mercedes","tag-nico-hulkenberg","tag-pascal-wehrlein","tag-red-bull","tag-red-bull-tag-heuer","tag-red-bull-racing","tag-renault","tag-romain-grosjean","tag-sauber","tag-sauber-ferrari","tag-sebastian-vettel","tag-serigo-perez","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-spanish-gp","tag-spanish-grand-prix","tag-toro-rosso","tag-valtteri-bottas","tag-williams","tag-williams-mercedes"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3742","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=3742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3742\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n