70th anniversary, FP2: Hamilton leads Mercedes one-two in 2nd practice at Silverstone

Mercedes took another 1-2 in practice for F1’s 70thAnniversary Grand Prix at Silverstone, with the championship leader beating team-mate Valtteri Bottas to the top spot by in FP2 by just under two tenths of a second. Daniel Ricciardo was third for Renault ahead of Red Bull’s Max Verstappen.

Hamilton set his best time, a lap of 1:25.606, on medium tyres while Bottas was 0.176s slower on the red-banded soft tyres. A number of drivers pointed to the fragile C4 compound soft on offer this weekend being slower than the3 more durable but supposedly less quick medium.

After early quick laps from Racing Point’s Lance Stroll and Nico Hülkenberg, Bottas moved to the front on medium tyres before Hamilton lowered the benchmark to 1:25.911s with his first flying lap, set on the soft tyres.

The pair then switched compounds and Bottas moved back to the top on softs before Hamilton once more claimed P1 with his medium-tyre best.

Daniel Ricciardo took third place in the session with a lap of 1:26.421. The Australian used softs to set the time and the lap left him eight tenths off Hamilton medium-shod pace. It also put him just under two hundredths of a second ahead of Red Bull’s Max Verstyappen who also set his best time on soft tyres.

Fifth place went to Stroll who was the last man within a second of Hamilton’s time. His lap of 1:26.501 left him 0.895 behind Hamilton and 0.245s ahead of sixth-place team-mate Hülkenberg.

Charles Leclerc finished the session in seventh, ahead of McLaren duo Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz, with Esteban Ocon rounding out the top 10.

Alex Albon finished 11th in the second Red Bull, ahead of AlphaTauri drivers Daniil Kvyat and Pierre Gasly, while Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel finished 14th. The German had a troubled end to the session when late on he pulled over at the side of the track reporting either an engine or gearbox failure. The session was red flagged moments later when Antonio Giovinazzi also stopped his car on track and with less than two minutes left on the clock the session was not restarted.