Max Verstappen was fastest in the second practice for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, the Red Bull driver set a 25.146 going three-tenths faster than George Russell. The two-time champion topped the evening session which was more representative of the conditions for qualifying and the race.<\/p>\n
The two-time champion goes into this weekend admitting a row about his refusal last weekend to help his teammate Sergio Perez in his championship battle with Charles Leclerc. The Ferrari driver going third four and a half tenths Verstappen and ahead of Lewis Hamilton by a tenth and a half.<\/p>\n
Verstappen continues to refuse to say what his problem is, but multiple sources have said that he believes Perez crashed deliberately in the closing stages of Monaco Grand Prix qualifying. That prevented the Dutchman from improving his time and securing a place on the front row, leaving him fourth on the grid behind Perez, who went on to win the race.<\/p>\n
It seems a meagre prize for Leclerc after his early season promise collapsed in a torrent of Ferrari errors and reliability failures, but two separate team orders disputes last weekend in Brazil revealed that both cared. Hamilton, meanwhile, had a near miss with the Haas of Kevin Magnussen in the corner where eleven months ago he lost the championship to Verstappen.<\/p>\n
At this early stage, it appears Red Bull has the advantage on both single lap and long run pace in Yas Marina a circuit which historically favoured the seasons champions, because of its high speed and high downforce nature. Verstappen looks as if following last weekend that the Red Bull had their weakest weekend of the year and sitting out FP1, he was in the rhythm once again.<\/p>\n
Hamilton put his Mercedes fourth, the Englishman going nine hundredths faster than Perez with the second Ferrari of Carlos Sainz sixth. Sainz however had to abort his first timed lap after coming across a slow running Haas, while his second run was eight-tenths off Verstappen.<\/p>\n
Hamilton said changes to his Mercedes’ car setup between the sessions were the main reason for his bigger-than-anticipated deficit, although expects Red Bull to be fast over the rest of the weekend.<\/p>\n
He said, \u201cWe’ll make some changes overnight… but otherwise, we’re relatively competitive, we’re right there. I think it looks a little bit closer [than Brazil]. I think the Red Bulls look a little bit quicker here, which is expected. We didn’t expect this to be our strongest race.\u201d<\/p>\n
The top three teams were covered by just under eight-tenths of a second, but Friday following Mercedes win last weekend in Sao Paulo looked encouraging on race pace. While Ferrari looked way off the leading pace set by Verstappen on the medium tyres, with the team admitting to Leclerc on team radio, \u201cOur pace is not great compared to the others.\u201d<\/p>\n
Esteban Ocon was best of the rest putting his Alpine seventh going five thousandths ahead of teammate Fernando Alonso. The team are looking to retain fourth in the constructors but the collision between the two drivers in the sprint in Sao Paulo allowed McLaren to close in.<\/p>\n
Daniel Ricciardo was ninth eight hundredths behind the Alpine\u2019s with the Alfa Romeo of Valtteri Bottas rounding out the top ten. The Finn spilt the two McLarens after going nearly two-tenths faster than the McLaren of Lando Norris, with the Aston Martin Sebastian Vettel twelfth.<\/p>\n
The German’s final FP2 session, however, saw him lock up and go wide at Turn Six. Guanyu Zhou spilt the two Aston Martin\u2019s after going nearly eight hundredths faster than Lance Stroll.<\/p>\n
Yuki Tsunoda was fifteenth going eight tenths faster than the Williams of Alex Albon. Mick Schumacher was seventeenth, ahead of his Haas teammate Kevin Magnussen by just over a tenth. Pierre Gasly and Nicolas Latifi rounded out the field, the Alpha Tauri driver going nearly four tenths ahead of Nicolas Latifi.<\/p>\n
Max Verstappen was fastest in the second practice for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, the Red Bull driver set a 25.146 going three-tenths faster than George Russell. The two-time champion topped the evening session which was more representative of the conditions for qualifying and the race. The two-time champion goes into this weekend admitting a<\/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":[51,63,64,65,664,767,814,1283,1298,1572,1573,1637,1642,1808,1843,2064,2077,2174,2175],"class_list":["post-11347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-race-reports","tag-51","tag-abu-dhabi","tag-abu-dhabi-gp","tag-abu-dhabi-grand-prix","tag-f1","tag-fp2","tag-george-russell","tag-max-verstappen","tag-mercedes","tag-practice-reports","tag-practice-two","tag-red-bull","tag-red-bull-racing","tag-sergio-perez","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-uae","tag-united-arab-emirates","tag-yas-marina","tag-yas-marina-circuit"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11347\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}