There were two red flags that held up proceedings – Carlos Sainz crashing in the early stages and Nicholas Latifi stopping late-on without drive on his Williams.
In slightly cooler conditions compared to Friday afternoon’s earlier FP1 session, Latifi had led the pack out of the pits and duly established the first-place benchmark time at 1m36.312s.
This was quickly beaten by Sebastian Vettel, Sainz and Esteban Ocon – with all the early pacesetters completing their early running on the medium tyres – the top spot time worked down to a 1m32.906s.
Fernando Alonso surged ahead a few minutes later on a 1m32.094s, also on the yellow-walled rubber, before Sainz moved back in front on a 1m31.463s.
As the first 10 minutes of the one-hour session ended, Leclerc’s first flying lap of FP2 ended with him going to the top of the times with a 1m31.131s, before Sainz – his opening run on the same set of tyres continuing – then getting back to first thanks to his 1m30.964s.
But a few minutes after this, Sainz’s session was ended when he suddenly lost the rear of his car going through the Turn 13 fast left just before the tight chicane late in the second sector and hit the wall on the outside of that complex.
Carlos Sainz Jr., Ferrari F1-75
Photo by: Carl Bingham / Motorsport Images
The Spaniard had appeared to slide slightly off line going through the preceding long Turn 12 right and when he swept through the next left his F1-75 snapped backwards to the right and he spun off backwards, the car’s front right knocked off against the barriers.
That led to a 12-minute delay as the wreckage was cleared, after which the pack re-emerged on the softs for a series of qualifying simulation efforts.
Alonso looked set to use his softs to forge ahead of Sainz’s medium-tyre benchmark, but he came across Verstappen going slowly at the chicane and had to back out.
The Red Bull driver had only just left the pits for the first time after Red Bull had replaced his…
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