Bottas fastest as fire and clash disrupts Portuguese GP FP2

Valtteri Bottas led a heavily disrupted second practice session in Portugal as Pierre Gasly suffered a big fire while Max Verstappen and Lance Stroll collided.

Bottas, who also led the way earlier on Friday at the new-for-2020 Algarve Circuit, clocked a time of 1:17.940s to finish over half a second clear of Verstappen.

Drivers only had a limited window in which to record quick times due to a third of the session being devoted to 2021 tyre testing, before two incidents led to lengthy stoppages.

Half an hour of tyre testing

The first half an hour of the 90-minute session was dedicated to tyre testing on behalf of sole supplier Pirelli.

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All 20 drivers ran the 2021 Hard tyre prototype, with the plan dictated by Pirelli, in order to assist the company with its development for next year.

The test was originally meant to take place at the second Silverstone event but was delayed in the wake of the failures that took place at the British Grand Prix.

It meant there was only an hour of scheduled running on 2020-specification rubber but that was then heavily interrupted by two separate incidents.

Gasly’s session stopped by fire

Gasly stopped and slowed exiting Turn 13 at the mid-point of the session when the rear of his AlphaTauri AT01 became engulfed in flames.

The Frenchman was swiftly able to extricate himself from the car and marshals were soon on hand to extinguish the fire.

The session was halted for over 15 minutes while the car was recovered.

But there was only a handful of green flag minutes before proceedings were stopped again.

Verstappen and Stroll in bizarre clash

Stroll, on a hot lap, passed Verstappen through Turn 14 and the Red Bull driver latched onto the rear of the Racing Point through Turn 15.

Verstappen pulled out from the slipstream and went to pass but Stroll continued to begin a second push lap.

Having almost drawn alongside as they went down the main straight Verstappen dived for the inside into Turn 1 but Stroll turned in and the cars came together.

Verstappen continued but Stroll was pitched into the Turn 1 gravel trap, causing the session to be halted once more as his RP20 was recovered.

“Mate is this f**king guy blind,” said Verstappen over the radio. “What the f**k is wrong with him. What a r*****.”

Stewards are investigating the incident.

Misleading order and no long runs

After Gasly’s fire and the Verstappen/Stroll clash there were just eight minutes remaining in the session.

It meant drivers were unable to carry out any representative long runs while others either missed the optimal window for hot laps or ran out of sequence.

McLaren duo Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz vaulted to third and fifth late on while Charles Leclerc and Sebastian Vettel set their times earlier on to classify fourth and seventh.

Gasly was seventh in spite of his fire while World Champion Lewis Hamilton finished a low-key eighth.

Hamilton aborted his intended push lap when he encountered a slow Daniil Kvyat and then abandoned another effort amid tyre complaints.

Saturday’s third practice session will begin at 11:00 local time.