#F1 #BritishGP FP2: @LandoNorris heads @McLarenF1 one-two.

Norris British GP FP2 – Home favourite Lando Norris lead from team-mate Oscar Piastri in a McLaren one-two in the afternoon FP2 session at the British GP as Red Bull’s Sergio Perez completed the top three before the rain hit Silverstone.

Norris posted the session-topping benchmark of a 1:26.549 on the C3 red side-walled soft compound and was 0.331 seconds quicker than team-mate Piastri as Perez was a further 0.434 seconds adrift of the Briton in third.

Reigning world champion Max Verstappen registered the best effort of the opening stints, a 1:27.831 amid the flurry of laps on the yellow-branded mediums in the first ten minutes of proceedings.

Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and Mercedes’ Sir Lewis Hamilton got close on their medium tyre stints, but neither could break under the 88 second bracket on their initial flyers.

Verstappen made the early switch to the C3 softer rubber setting a 1:27.333, although Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz managed to do a hot-lap just 0.523 seconds behind his ex-Toro Rosso team-mate on the medium rubber.

Last round’s Austrian GP winner George Russell found more time on the C2 medium compounds, getting within three tenths of Verstappen’s effort, before the soft-tyre qualifying simulations got started properly across the halfway point of the 60-minute session – as it became increasingly evident that the Dutchman was running out-of-sync from the majority.

Verstappen’s best time at the top was knocked off by Leclerc, who saved his SF-24 racer from a scary slide through the Maggots/Becketts/Chapel complex to momentarily sit quickest. The Monegasque driver was ousted by MoneyGram Haas F1 Team’s Nico Hulkenberg’s 1:26.990 effort, the first time in the 1:26 bracket this weekend so far, who in-turn lost his P1 slot to Piastri.

Piastri set a 1:26.880, but this was beaten by his McLaren team-mate Norris’s 1:26.549, who stood at the top as the qualifying simulation runs drew to a close.

This coincided with the reports from teams speaking to their drivers over the radio that rain was approaching and expected to precipitate with 5-10 minutes to go, prompting a switch to a range of different compounds to do their usual traditional long race run data gathering in preparation for Sunday’s race.

The time-sheets were largely unchanged, ensuring that Norris topped both sessions completing the Friday sweep and kept Piastri in second; with five minutes remaining on the clock, rain started to hit the Silverstone Circuit to dampen the team’s desire to continue running right until the end of the session.

Although a few drivers opted to run the green-branded intermediates to explore the damp track conditions, this unsurprisingly did not make any difference to the timing classification.

Perez, who did not take part in the earlier FP1 session after giving his RB20 racer to rookie Isack Hadjar, was amongst the last few drivers to post a flying lap on the softs and jumped up to third.

This demoted Hulkenberg to fourth as Leclerc rounded out the top five as Verstappen and Hamilton followed in sixth and seventh respectively.

Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz was eighth as Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll and Mercedes’ George Russell completed the top ten.

Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso finished FP2 outside the top ten in 11^th place and ahead of Sauber’s Valtteri Bottas who was 12^th and Williams Racing’s Alexander Albon who came 13^th in the order.

BWT Alpine F1 Team duo Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon followed in 14^th and 15^th respectively as RB’s Yuki Tsunoda ended the afternoon 16^th in the classification.

Williams’ Logan Sargeant placed 17^th in the classification and in-front of Sauber’s Zhou Guanyu who took 18^th as RB’s Daniel Ricciardo and MoneyGram Haas F1 Team’s Kevin Magnussen brought up the rear.

You can see the full Formula 1 Qatar Airways British Grand Prix 2024 Free Practice 2 Results Classification at the link: https://www.formula1.com/en/results.html/2024/races/1240/great-britain/practice-2.html

#BritishGP FP1: @LandoNorris tops time-sheets ahead of @lance_stroll. #F1

@HaasF1Team sign @OllieBearman on multi-year deal. #F1 #F1DriverMarket

#F1 Qatar Airways #BritishGP 2024 Preview. #Formula1 #BritishGrandPrix