Leclerc tops FP2 from Hamilton

Leclerc spent the majority of the session sat on top of the order, where he picked up the fastest time and then proceeded to whittle down the lap time across his medium and soft-tyre runs to demonstrate an early advantage.

It took less than 10 minutes for the times to return to the ballpark that the drivers had explored in the earlier FP1 session, as Leclerc grabbed a 1m12.372s on the medium compound to shatter the 1m13.265s benchmark that Max Verstappen had produced on the hard tyre.

The Monegasque continued to assume sole responsibility for bringing the times down as the session moved into its next quarter, following up that effort with a 1m12.260s and a 1m12.125s on the same set of medium tyres.

He then broke the 1m12s deadlock to set a 1m11.573s, again on the mediums, but the times were set to tumble further as the teams switched to soft tyres on the cusp of the session’s mid-way point.

Verstappen got closer to Leclerc’s earlier time but was still about a quarter of a second shy despite being equipped with softs, and the Ferrari driver then continue to push the envelope further with a soft-shod 1m11.278s lap.

Attempting to respond, Verstappen knocked the wall in Portier with the rear of his Red Bull and thus had to abort his lap – following a series of wall touches from around the field as the drivers explored the tight confines of the Monaco circuit.

Leclerc attempted to dig further time out of his car, but went fractionally wide in the Fairmont hairpin on one attempt and then suffered a wobble at Portier on his following effort, and so progressed into long run simulations thereafter.

This largely ended the pursuit of time at the head of the leaderboard, although second was hotly contested; Fernando Alonso prised Verstappen out of the runner-up position, but he in turn was dislodged by Hamilton as the Mercedes driver posted a 1m11.466s.

Verstappen was fourth fastest, despite struggling with a headache thanks to his Red Bull “jumping like a kangaroo”, to get the Dutchman ahead of McLaren’s Lando Norris.

Carlos Sainz struggled to match his Ferrari team-mate Leclerc and found himself over six tenths adrift, and had exactly 0.1s in hand over Lance Stroll.

Sergio Perez improved from the earlier session and was eighth fastest, as Alex Albon and George Russell rounded out the top half of the field.

F1 Monaco GP – FP2 results

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