Mugello, FP2: Bottas continues to set the pace ahead of Hamilton, Verstappen

After topping the order in the opening practice session for this weekend’s first F1 Tuscan Grand Prix, Valtteri Bottas continued to set the pace at Mugello in the afternoon, beating team-mate Lewis Hamilton by over two tenths of a second in a session that was twice interrupted by red flags.

Bottas led the way in the opening phase of the session, run largely on medium tyres and the Finn took P1 on the yellow banded tyres with a time of 1:18.019. The field then began to move to soft tyres for qualifying simulations when Lando Norris sent the field back to the pit lane when he went off at Turn 3, Poggio Secco.

The McLaren driver had started his quali sim when he went wide on the corner exit and slid through the gravel trap. He hit the barriers nose first, detaching the front wing, before coming to rest. Unable to get going again, his stoppage brought out the red flags.

The session resumed after almost 10-minutes and the Mercedes cars emerged on soft tyres for their qualifying runs. Bottas went quickest of all through the first two sectors as he held the top spot with a lap of 1:16.989. Hamilton was quickest in the final sector but the deficit across the first two sectors left him 0.207 behind his team-mate.

Max Verstappen took third place in the session and kept Mercedes honest by finishing just under four hundredths of a second behind Hamilton. The Dutchman’s team-mate Alex Albon was fourth, but the Thai driver was more than seven tenths of a second adrift of Verstappen.

Albon was, however, the last drive to get within a second of Bottas.

Renault took fifth and sixth in the session, with Daniel Ricciardo edging team-mate Esteban Ocon by a fraction under eight hundredths of a second. Ocon finished ahead of Racing Point’s Sergio Pérez, AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly and the Alfa Rome of Kimi Räikkönen.

After Charles Leclerc opened the weekend of Ferrari’s 1000th race with a useful looking third place in the opening session, the afternoon was more muted for the Scuderia with Leclerc finishing in 10th position and Sebastian Vettel ending the session in P12.

The long runs in the second half of the session were interrupted by a second flag when Sergio Pérez and Kimi Räikkönen collided.

Räikkönen was starting lap when Pérez emerged from the pit lane. The Mexican seemed not to see the Finn and as they went into Turn 1 he clipped the rear of Räikkönen’s car as the Alfa Romeo driver turned in. Räikkönen was left beached in the gravel trap and the red flags were once again displayed.

Elsewhere, there was trouble for Romain Grosjean. The Frenchman completed just five laps in the session due to an electrical problem on his Haas car.