The Briton’s late improvements on the C4 soft tyre meant he jumped ahead of Wednesday morning pacesetter Charles Leclerc, to lead the day with a best time of 1m19.568s, which was 0.597s faster than Leclerc managed during the opening four hours of running.
As was the case during the morning, the session ran uninterrupted throughout, a continued surprise for anyone expecting the wholesale rule changes to mean the teams would struggle to quickly rack up significant mileage.
But there was again a mileage discrepancy across the grid, as Haas and Alfa Romeo – both of which switched drivers for the second session – ended the day on much lower totals than the leading squads in the mileage stakes, which were headed by Ferrari’s 153.
In total, eight teams completed over 100 laps, with Red Bull second best on 147 in Max Verstappen’s hands all day.
For most of the afternoon there was little change in the timesheets before Norris’s late improvements, save for the drivers that had jumped…
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