#BritishGP FP2: @Max33Verstappen tops time-sheets ahead of @Carlossainz55. #F1

Verstappen British GP FP2 – Red Bull’s Max Verstappen was fastest in FP2 at the British GP ahead of Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz who was second and Williams Racing’s Alexander Albon who rounded out the top three.

Verstappen posted the session-topping benchmark of a 1:28.078 and was a narrow 0.022 seconds quicker than Sainz with Albon a further 0.218 seconds off the Dutchman.

Several other teams had disrupted sessions – including Aston Martin and Mercedes – whilst Williams produced an impressive result in-front of the British faithful.

The start of Free Practice Two was delayed by five minutes so the circuit could be swept thoroughly following several offs and crashes that occurred in the FIA Formula 2 qualifying session, but FP2 ran for the full 60 minutes as normal.

AlphaTauri’s Nyck de Vries was the first to head out on track as the early proceedings began on the C1 hard and C2 medium rubber.

Some drivers had a short run in P1 as they set their opening efforts before Red Bull’s Sergio Perez posted the first benchmark of a 1:30.014.

His team-mate Verstappen came through to go well ahead with a 1:29.550, which remained as the session’s quickest for the next part of the session.

As the opening ten minutes ended, Perez was able to complete his medium tyre stint and setting a time-topping 1:29.451.

But this did not last for long, with Sainz also finishing his initial medium compound run, posting a 1:29.083, which put him in-front of Perez.

After a brief lull of track action ahead of the proceeding’s middle third, the leaders returned this time on the C3 red-marked softer tyres to complete their qualifying simulations.

Verstappen was the first of the front-runners to emerge on the softs, which he used to hammer in the quickest time in all three sectors and a new best time of a 1:28.078.

Perez followed his team-mate through, but 0.264 adrift, before he was relegated to fourth, first by Albon setting a brilliant effort on the softs and then by Sainz.

Sainz could not move back to top spot with his initial flyer on the softs, but he did post a 1:28.100 and was a very narrow 0.022 seconds off of Verstappen.

The field then switched to the traditional high-fuel running, which closed out the second hour-long session, during which the only note was Stroll reporting to his team that one of his fingers was hit by a stone to which he said it “hurt pretty bad” but vowed to “keep going”, which the Canadian did.

Behind fifth-placed Perez came Williams Racing’s Logan Sargeant, backing up a solid day for the Grove based-squad.

Stroll was sixth for Aston Martin, who had his qualifying simulation run interrupted by having to pit so he left-side mirror of his AMR23 racer could be worked on, as the part came loose, whilst the Canadian circulated the Silverstone Circuit on the softs.

Then Haas F1 Team’s Nico Hulkenberg followed in seventh, which gave the Kannapolis-Banbury outfit a much better result compared to his last place in the earlier FP1 session, when the team was checking his beam wing and front suspension upgrades.

Alpine F1 Team’s Pierre Gasly was eighth as McLaren’s Oscar Piastri and Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso rounded out the top ten.

Alonso also had his soft tyre stint interrupted, as the Silverstone-based squad ordered the Spaniard to quickly slow after his crossed the line following his flyer as it had detected debris causing a “problem”, although it did not report this as a puncture.

Alfa Romeo’s Zhou Guanyu came 11th in the order and ahead of Mercedes’ George Russell who was 12th, Alpine’s Esteban Ocon who took 13th and McLaren’s Lando Norris who ended Free Practice 2 in 14th.

Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton finished the session in 15th and in-front of Alfa Romeo’s Valtteri Bottas who took 16th and Haas F1 Team’s Kevin Magnussen who placed 17th.

Scuderia AlphaTauri pairing Yuki Tsunoda and de Vries ended the day in 18th and 19th respectively as Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc brought up the rear with the latter unable to take part in the session due to an electrical issue.

You can see the full Formula 1 Aramco British Grand Prix 2023 Free Practice 2 Results Classification at the link: https://www.formula1.com/en/results.html/2023/races/1214/great-britain/practice-2.html

#BritishGP FP1: @Max33Verstappen leads @RedBullRacing one-two. #F1

#F1 @Aramco #BritishGP 2023 Preview. #Formula1 #BritishGrandPrix