#F1 #MonacoGP FP2: @CharlesLeclerc quickest ahead of @LewisHamilton, @alo_oficial.

Leclerc Monaco GP FP2 – Local favourite Charles Leclerc topped the afternoon practice session for Ferrari at the Monaco GP ahead of Mercedes’ Sir Lewis Hamilton and Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso who completed the top three.

Leclerc posted the session-topping benchmark of a 1:11.278 on the C5 red side-walled Soft tyre and was 0.188 seconds clear of Hamilton as Alonso was a further 0.475 seconds adrift of the Monegasque driver in third.

Leclerc spent the majority of FP2 on top of the pile, where he set the quickest effort and then proceeded to bring down the lap times across his medium and soft tyre stints to display an early advantage.

It took less than ten minutes on the clock to return to the level where the drivers had explored in the earlier FP1 session as Leclerc set a 1:12.372 on the C4 yellow-branded mediums to blitz the 1:13.265 benchmark that Red Bull’s Max Verstappen had registered on the harder rubber.

The Monegasque driver continued his responsibility to bring the times down as proceedings reached it’s next quarter, following up with a 1:12.260 then a 1:12.125 on the same set of mediums.

The Ferrari driver then broke under the 1:12 bracket to post a 1:11.573, again on the C4 mediums, but the times were set to drop further as the teams swapped to the C5 red side-walled softer tyre on the cusp of FP2’s halfway point.

Verstappen got closer to Leclerc’s earlier effort but was still a quarter of a second adrift despite being on a set of softs, and the latter continued to set the bar further posting a 1:11.278 flyer.

In a bid to respond, Verstappen tapped the wall at Portier with the rear of his Red Bull RB20 entry and thus had to abandon his hot-lap – following in a string of wall touched from around the streets of Monte Carlo as the drivers continued to push their limits through the tight-twisty circuit.

Leclerc pushed to extract more out of his SF-24 racer, but he went fractionally wide at the Fairmont hairpin on one hot-lap and then suffered a wobble out of Portier on his following flying tour, and then progressing into long race data gathering runs.

This put an end of the pursuit to hit the top of the timing sheets, although second was very contested: Aston Martin’s Alonso demoted Verstappen from the runner-up spot of the order, but the championship leader in-turn was also relegated a place by Hamilton as the Briton posted a 1:11.466.

Thus Verstappen placed fourth, despite suffering a headache thanks to his RB20 “jumping like a kangaroo”, to get the three-time world champion ahead of McLaren’s Lando Norris.

Carlos Sainz was unable to match his session-topping Ferrari team-mate Leclerc and found himself 0.684 adrift and had 0.1 seconds over the second Aston Martin AMR24 entry of Lance Stroll.

Red Bull’s Sergio Perez placed eighth as Williams Racing’s Alexander Albon and Mercedes’ George Russell rounded out the top ten.

RB’s Yuki Tsunoda finished the after practice session outside the top ten in 11th place and ahead of McLaren’s Oscar Piastri who ended the day 12^th.

MoneyGram Haas F1 Team’s Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hulkenberg held 13^th and 15^th respectively as Alpine’s Esteban Ocon split the pairing in 14^th.

RB’s Daniel Ricciardo took 16^th and ahead of Alpine’s Pierre Gasly who placed 17^th in the classification.

Williams’ Logan Sargeant was 18^th and in-front of Sauber’s Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu who brought up the rear.

You can see the full Formula 1 Grand Prix De Monaco 2024 Free Practice 2 Results Classification at the link: https://www.formula1.com/en/results.html/2024/races/1236/monaco/practice-2.html

2024 F1 World Championship Standings

#F1 #MonacoGP FP1: @LewisHamilton pips @OscarPiastri by 0.029s, @Max33Verstappen 11th.

#F1 Grand Prix De Monaco 2024 Preview. #Formula1 #MonacoGrandPrix