Lance Stroll returned to his Aston Martin car after Felipe Drugovich ran during FP1 earlier in the afternoon. Unfortunately for the Canadian, his day was almost immediately done as he pulled off the circuit on the exit of the Ascari chicane with an issue. Aston Martin confirmed it was a fuel system issue.
When the session resumed, a 1:22.259 from Max Verstappen put him at the top on mediums, followed by Albon with a gap of 0.059s. Albon was on softs.
Pérez, Leclerc and Sainz completed the top 5, with Russell, Hamilton, Sargeant, Norris and Ocon rounding out the top 10 after 15 minutes.
Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz was the first into the 1:21s as a 1:21.565 put him 0.273s clear of teammate Charles Leclerc. Alonso, Pérez and Verstappen followed at the 25-minute mark. The Spaniard was on softs, with the Ferraris and Red Bulls on mediums.
When the qualifying simulations on the softs took place, the Ferrari of Carlos Sainz put his second lap together after a mistake at the second chicane on his first flier to top the times with a 1:21.355 to pip Lando Norris by 0.019s.
Photo credit: Scuderia Ferrari
Pérez slotted into P3 in his Red Bull, 0.185s adrift of Sainz. Piastri was only 0.005 slower than the Mexican as McLaren impressed over a single lap once again.
World Championship leader Max Verstappen could only manage P5 as he had a pile of traffic to navigate in the middle sector. Leclerc completed the top 6 with only 0.361s covering all of them.
A second red flag was thrown with just under 9 minutes to go as Sergio Pérez understeered wide in the final corner, spun in the gravel and clipped the wall with his rear wing. His session was done.
Albon, Alonso, Russell and Hülkenberg completed the top 10 on the first day of action.
Magnussen, Bottas, Gasly, Tsunoda, Ocon, Sargeant, Hamilton, Lawson, Zhou and the unlucky Stroll filled the second half of the timesheets.
Hamilton complained about lacking pace on the straights on his first run of FP2, and he ended up not completing a qualifying simulation on softs either.
