Bahrain, FP2: Hamilton on top again in Bahrain as Albon crashes out

Lewis Hamilton went quickest in the second practice for the Bahrain Grand Prix, as Red Bull Racing Alex Albon crashed out of the session.

Albon’s team-mate Max Verstappen led the way for a large part of the session with a time set on medium tyres, but a late run on soft tyres allowed Hamilton to push past the Dutchman and claim top spot by more than three tenths of a second. Third place in the session went to Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas.

At the start of the night-time session drivers again ran on Pirelli’s 2021 tyres but when teams began to switch to the tyres on offer for this weekend Verstappen soon established pre-eminence with his lap 1:29.318.

Verstappen then attempted a soft tyre run but his pace flagged in the final sector. Bottas too experienced the same outcome when he attempted a flying lap on the red-banded rubber.

The session was then brought to a halt when Albon crashed heavily in the final corner.

The Thai driver had enjoyed a good opening to his lap but pushing hard he went wide in Turn 14 and with one side of the car on the dust and the other on track he spun and slide hard into the wall damaging his car severely.

The session was red flagged for 10 minutes as his wrecked RB16 was removed but it had to be halted almost as soon as it resumed when a stray dog wandered onto the track.

Following a five-minute delay the action resumed and Hamilton then put in best lap of the session with 15 minutes left on the clock, setting the benchmark at 1:28.971s.

The lap put him 0.347s clear of Verstappen, with Bottas third,

Sergio Perez was fourth for Racing Point ahead of Renault’s Daniel Ricciardo and AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly, Lando Norris, was seventh for McLaren ahead of Racing Point’s Lance Stroll was eighth in the second Racing Point, while Daniil Kvyat and Albon rounded out the top 1.