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Formula 1 Azerbaijan GP

Azerbaijan GP Friday practice

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Verstappen is getting on with it now, he moves into second to make it a Red Bull 1-2. Gasly has also improved, and he goes ninth.
Radio Comms
"Try to stay in gear and come back to the box," Ericsson was told. So that sounds like a technical issue on the Sauber.
Bottas splits the Red Bulls with a lap 0.058s slower than Ricciardo.
Vettel jumps from 12th to fourth with a lap on ultrasofts.
Scott Mitchell
Bottas's final sector on his first lap really wasn't anything to write home about. Looked about half a second down on Ricciardo. And that last improvement was completed with a final sector 0.4s slower than Ricciardo's.

It seems the ultrasofts aren't quite holding up over an entire push lap, at least on the Mercedes. A cool-down lap gets more life out of them, as evidenced by Bottas's improvements in individual sectors, but they don't quite have enough life by the final sector.

If you don't have the grip through/exiting the Turn 16 left-hander, you carry that loss of speed all the way through the flat-out kinks of Turns 17, 18 and 19...
Sainz gets involved near the top and puts his Renault third.
Hamilton improves his time on ultrasofts - he's fourth.
Perez improves, and his lap is enough to put him seventh.
Ericsson is now sat in the Sauber hospitality unit after bringing his car back to the pits slowly a few minutes ago.
Alonso sneaks into the top 10 with a 1m44.5s.
Stopwatch
Ricciardo improves by half a second with an attempt on fresh ultrasofts. That's the benchmark everyone has to shoot for then: 1m43.017s.
Hamilton improves, but he's still half a second down on Ricciardo, in third behind Bottas.
Perez and Ocon both improve, currently sitting in seventh and eighth - familiar territory for Force India last year but not so much in 2018 so far.
Stopwatch
Ricciardo improves again! This time it's a 1m42.816s to put him seven tenths clear of Bottas.
Magnussen moves up to fifth on his qualifying simulation.
Ah, we have a proper lap from a Ferrari: Raikkonen is just 0.048s down on Ricciardo's best now.
Hulkenberg has emerged from the pits with a new plank on the bottom of his car.
Ocon goes fifth. Hamilton set a new fastest sector time at the start of the lap, but a lock-up into Turn 7 forced him to abandon his effort.
Stopwatch
Another improvement from Ricciardo, who finds a tiny bit of time with six laps on these ultrasofts now.
Verstappen puts the second Red Bull third, cracking on with his session after missing the first part as his car was still being repaired following his crash in FP1.
Hulkenberg goes ninth with that new floor.
Alonso picks up a bit of a tow from Hulkenberg, and crosses the line to go sixth.
Verstappen has nudged the wall at Turn 7.
Information
Top 10 now we are past the halfway stage of FP2: 1 Ricciardo, 2 Raikkonen, 3 Verstappen, 4 Bottas, 5 Hamilton, 6 Alonso, 7 Ocon, 8 Sainz, 9 Magnussen, 10 Hulkenberg.
Another improvement for Verstappen, who stays third. He's 0.1s down on Ricciardo.
It's reasonably quiet out there now. We've probably seen most of the qualifying simulation runs, and we'll be into race preparation work soon when the drivers head back out.
Every car that is on track doing long-run work is on ultrasofts at the moment.
Radio Comms
Hulkenberg feels like he is losing his brakes, but Renault tells him there is nothing in the data to suggest there is a problem.
Magnussen, Grosjean, and Ericsson (who has a suspected gearbox issue) are the only drivers not on track at the moment. Everyone else is getting on with race simulation work.
Radio Comms
Sainz is reporting "quite a lot of rear degradation". He's told to make a brake balance adjustment to compensate for it.

By: Geoff Creighton

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