Charles Leclerc topped a heavily disrupted second practice session ahead of Formula 1’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix as Ferrari team-mate Carlos Sainz was one of two drivers who brought out the red flags with an early crash.
With 10 reserves and rookies performing FP1 duties earlier today, FP2 saw the first on-track action for many full-time drivers including Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez who both vacated their seats for the opening hour.
Read more: Abu Dhabi GP – FP2 Results
With practice running already limited for half of the field and FP2 being the only representative session ahead of Saturday’s qualifying session, all drivers were keen to take to the Yas Marina Circuit early in an effort to get up to speed swiftly.
Those plans were scuppered for all when the Ferrari of Carlos Sainz found the barriers at Turn 3, bringing out the red flags after just eight minutes of running.
The Spaniard’s car span twice on it’s way into the barriers after losing aerodynamic performance due to dirty air from a car ahead, but his SF-23 also looked as if it bottomed out over a bump triggering an unrecoverable snap of oversteer, sending him on a one-way trip into the TecPro.
Sainz’s accident is the second time in the past week that his side of the garage have been faced with a sizeable repair job following his incident in Las Vegas and will certainly come with further consequences come qualifying and the race as a result of the loss in practice running.
Prior to the incident, drivers had only had time to clock installation laps leaving George Russell atop the leader board with a time of 1:25.906s, nearly half-a-second ahead of Daniel Ricciardo and Lance Stroll.
A 20 minute delay for barrier repairs and clean-up left teams confronted with major disruption to their run plans. Having lost much of the time that would have been dedicated to one lap performance, while some opted to continue directing their focus on long run preparation.
Haas’ Nico Hulkenberg was one driver that had opted to bolt on the Soft tyre for a low-fuel attempt, but the German dipped a wheel on the artificial grass at the exit of Turn 1 resulting in a loss of traction that sent the VF-23 spinning into the inside barrier. The Haas took damage to the rear wing and rear right suspension sending Hulkenberg too out of the session.
After a second, briefer, red flag spell, there remained next to no representative running during FP2 leaving teams with just 15 minutes of dusk running. Verstappen drew attention to himself as he attempted to barge his way through the queue of traffic at the pit exit, passing Lewis Hamilton and Pierre Gasly on his way through the tunnel.
As the sun set, a number of drivers were able to clock some representative qualifying running on the Soft compound. The advantage lay with Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc who clocked a 1:24.809s, followed by Lando Norris who initially ran on the Mediums before swapping to the Softs to go just 0.043s adrift of the Monegasque.
Verstappen slotted into third place after he too made the switch from the Mediums to the Softs. The Dutchman was 0.173s off of the Ferrari’s benchmark. Valtteri Bottas followed in fourth ahead of Perez, Russell and Zhou.
Hamilton was the second-fastest of the Mercedes duo in eighth with the seven-time champion followed by Pierre Gasly and Oscar Piastri who completed the top ten.
