Esteban Ocon finishes on top in FP2, ahead of Perez and Russell

Esteban Ocon finished on top in FP2, as a lap time of 1:14.604 was enough to beat out Sergio Perez and George Russell. The Alpine driver was running in the midfield for most of the session, but his lap was enough to move him to the top and hold the lead.

It was a strange session, as teams opted to run very different strategies and fuel loads throughout the hour and this made for an extremely mixed-up grid.

Mercedes’ duo of Russell and Lewis Hamilton were running in the top five for the majority of the session, but as teams switched to soft tyres to end FP2, the two couldn’t match it and move further up from third and sixth.

As for Red Bull, Perez ran on soft tyres for the majority of the hour and was able to match and sometimes beat the times set by the Mercedes drivers, but it was a different story for Max Verstappen. The two-time World Champion was running on hard tyres and was as low as 13th, but a late switch to softs pushed him into the top five.

Ocon’s teammate Fernando Alonso was able to beat out Verstappen in the session and ended up finishing in fourth. Pierre Gasly was the next ‘best of the midfield’ as he claimed the seventh spot, ahead of Mick Schumacher and the Sprint’s pole sitter Kevin Magnussen.

Lando Norris stole the final spot in the top 10 ahead of Carlos Sainz, Yuki Tsunoda, Charles Leclerc and his teammate Daniel Ricciardo. Ferrari were running in the top five for the first half of the session, but they weren’t able to improve and dropped all the down to 11th and 13th.

It was an extremely quiet session for the six drivers from Alfa Romeo, Aston Martin and Williams. Valtteri Bottas led the way in 15th, ahead of Nicholas Latifi, who had a small issue earlier in the session and found the grass after locking up. Aston Martin’s torrid weekend continued with Lance Stroll and Sebastian Vettel only being able to best 17th and 18th, with Guanyu Zhou claiming the 19th spot. Logan Sargeant finished last on the grid, but his goal for the session was to get 100KM done so he could claim an extra super license point, which he was able to do.