Charles Leclerc was fastest in second practice for the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, the Ferrari driver set a 15.906 going nearly two tenths faster than Oscar Piastri. The Monacan looked to maximise the performance of the car looking comfortable despite the gusty conditions on Friday afternoon in Imola.<\/p>\n
Leclerc set his fastest time midway through the session having switched to his second set of soft tyres. However, Lando Norris who finished the session down in twelfth would have been fastest having made a mistake through the second Rivazza running wide.<\/p>\n
McLaren also showing strong pace to take second through Oscar Piastri two weeks on from Lando Norris’ breakthrough win in Miami, world champions Red Bull finished half a second adrift in the unusually lowly positions of seventh and eighth on the headline timesheet despite their own car upgrades.<\/p>\n
Ferrari looked the most comfortable, after the team introduced their first major development to the car, featuring revised aerodynamics around the bodywork and floor. While McLaren continued to look competitive, Norris had the fastest middle sector.<\/p>\n
Yuki Tsunoda was third for RB ahead of the teams home race he was almost two-tenths behind the McLaren. The Japanese driver a hundredth ahead of the two Mercedes with Lewis Hamilton going a hundredth and a half faster than teammate George Russell. Both Mercedes improved on the second run going ahead of Carlos Sainz who made a mistake on his fastest lap, as he went wide at Variante Alta.<\/p>\n
Red Bull has looked out of sorts on Friday and that continued in FP2, Max Verstappen only seventh half a second off. He had a series of offs but it appears that the team are struggling in the middle sector, but the three-time champion also went off through the two Rivazza corners.<\/p>\n
His fastest time coming on his second qualifying simulation run, Verstappen came across Hamilton touring slowly through the Villeneuve chicane and angrily aborted his run. When Verstappen cut across the Mercedes’ bow to show his fury, Hamilton offering a hand up in apology from his cockpit, Perez was bearing down on the pair on the approach to Tosa and so he too backed off.<\/p>\n
One solace from a difficult day for Red Bull was that the RB20 looked more familiarly competitive on the heavier-fuel long runs. But, at least on the headline single-lap pace, the world champions appear to have a lot of work to do overnight to get back on terms with Ferrari and McLaren ahead of FP3.<\/p>\n
Nico Hulkenberg was ninth the Haas driver eight hundredths behind Perez and ahead of Fernando Alonso by just over a hundredth. Alonso was unhappy as on his flying lap he encountered a slow-moving Hamilton on the racing line.<\/p>\n
Daniel Ricciardo was eleventh, the RB driver missing out on the top ten by just over a tenth and ahead of his former teammate Lando Norris by a hundredth. Norris who took his maiden victory in Miami a fortnight ago was also a hundredth faster than the second Aston Martin of Lance Stroll.<\/p>\n
The two Alpine\u2019s slotted in behind, Esteban Ocon two-tenths behind Stroll and half a tenth faster than his teammate Pierre Gasly. Valtteri Bottas was sixteenth four tenths ahead of Kevin Magnussen, who had his first outing at Imola since 2020 after being replaced by Ollie Bearman in FP1.<\/p>\n
It was another tough start to the weekend for Williams, Alex Albon was eighteenth ahead of Guanyu Zhou by half a second while teammate Logan Sargeant was last.<\/p>\n
Charles Leclerc was fastest in second practice for the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, the Ferrari driver set a 15.906 going nearly two tenths faster than Oscar Piastri. The Monacan looked to maximise the performance of the car looking comfortable despite the gusty conditions on Friday afternoon in Imola. Leclerc set his fastest time midway through<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12506,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[2234,2203,390,607,608,609,709,765,767,943,982,1287,1290,1475,1572,1573,2248,2249,2186],"class_list":["post-13502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-race-reports","tag-2234","tag-autodromo-internazionale-enzo-e-dino-ferrari","tag-charles-leclerc","tag-emilia-romagna","tag-emilia-romagna-gp","tag-emilia-romagna-grand-prix","tag-ferrari","tag-fp","tag-fp2","tag-imola","tag-italy","tag-mclaren","tag-mclaren-mercedes","tag-oscar-piastri","tag-practice-reports","tag-practice-two","tag-rb","tag-rb-rbpt-honda","tag-yuki-tsunoda"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13502","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13502"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13504,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13502\/revisions\/13504"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}