With the surface at Intercity Istanbul park having been newly cleaned for this weekend the times are now flying into the 1:23s with Hamilton once again topping the timesheets. Hamilton claimed the amount of grip on track is astounding compared to last year.
Charles Leclerc went second fastest making a good impact in FP2. Leclerc will need to qualify well in Turkey to boost Ferrari’s hopes in Sunday’s race due to Sainz starting from the back of the grid.
Down in 3rd Valtteri Bottas made good improvements on FP1 but was still 4 tenths down on his teammate in the second practice.
The two Red Bulls in their striking one-off white liveries found themselves rounding out 4th and 5th with Sergio Perez just bettering Max Verstappen. Max was complaining over the radio about stability issues mid-corner possibly due to the ever-changing wind crossing the track.
Wind was the major factor affecting drivers across FP2 especially Nicholas Latifi who overcooked it coming out of turn 9 losing his rear end but able to continue on afterwards without any issues.
It seems once again that traffic will be an issue on track during the final practice session and moving on to qualifying. Drivers cooped up along the final bend in hopes to test a low fuel flying lap with clear air ahead.
The result was a line of cars, sometimes two abreast, blocking the entrance to the back street with some potentially serious accidents narrowly avoided.
Here are how the drivers classified:
POS | DRIVER | TIME | GAP |
---|---|---|---|
1 | Lewis Hamilton | 1:23.804 | |
2 | Charles Leclerc | 1:23.970 | +0.166s |
3 | Valtteri Bottas | 1:24.214 | +0.410s |
4 | Sergio Perez | 1:24.373 | +0.569s |
5 | Max Verstappen | 1:24.439 | +0.635s |
6 | Lando Norris | 1:24.525 | +0.721s |
7 | Fernando Alonso | 1:24.660 | +0.856s |
8 | Esteban Ocon | 1:24.672 | +0.868s |
9 | Pierre Gasly | 1:24.756 | +0.952s |
10 | Antonio Giovinazzi | 1:24.796 | +0.992s |
11 | Yuki Tsunoda | 1:24.882 | +1.078s |
12 | Carlos Sainz | 1:24.903 | +1.099s |
13 | Lance Stroll | 1:25.020 | +1.216s |
14 | Daniel Ricciardo | 1:25.060 | +1.256s |
15 | Kimi Räikkönen | 1:25.143 | +1.339s |
16 | Sebastian Vettel | 1:25.229 | +1.425s |
17 | Nicholas Latifi | 1:25.307 | +1.503s |
18 | George Russell | 1:25.358 | +1.554s |
19 | Mick Schumacher | 1:25.480 | +1.676s |
20 | Nikita Mazepin | 1:25.698 | +1.894s |
Featured image source: twitter.com/mercedesAMGF1