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Formula 1
Azerbaijan GP
Azerbaijan GP Friday practice
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Every car that is on track doing long-run work is on ultrasofts at the moment.
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.
Another improvement for Verstappen, who stays third. He's 0.1s down on Ricciardo.
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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.
Verstappen has nudged the wall at Turn 7.
Alonso picks up a bit of a tow from Hulkenberg, and crosses the line to go sixth.
Hulkenberg goes ninth with that new floor.
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.
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Another improvement from Ricciardo, who finds a tiny bit of time with six laps on these ultrasofts now.
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.
Hulkenberg has emerged from the pits with a new plank on the bottom of his car.
Ah, we have a proper lap from a Ferrari: Raikkonen is just 0.048s down on Ricciardo's best now.
Magnussen moves up to fifth on his qualifying simulation.
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Ricciardo improves again! This time it's a 1m42.816s to put him seven tenths clear of 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.
Hamilton improves, but he's still half a second down on Ricciardo, in third behind Bottas.
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Ricciardo improves by half a second with an attempt on fresh ultrasofts. That's the benchmark everyone has to shoot for then: 1m43.017s.
Alonso sneaks into the top 10 with a 1m44.5s.
Ericsson is now sat in the Sauber hospitality unit after bringing his car back to the pits slowly a few minutes ago.
Perez improves, and his lap is enough to put him seventh.
Hamilton improves his time on ultrasofts - he's fourth.
Sainz gets involved near the top and puts his Renault third.
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...
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...
Vettel jumps from 12th to fourth with a lap on ultrasofts.
Bottas splits the Red Bulls with a lap 0.058s slower than Ricciardo.
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"Try to stay in gear and come back to the box," Ericsson was told. So that sounds like a technical issue on the Sauber.
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.
Ericsson is touring back to the pits. It's not clear why.
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Hulkenberg is having his plank and floor checked. The car is up on stands in the garage at the moment.
Bottas joins the fun now as well, and he moves ahead of Hamilton to take second.
Verstappen gets a cleaner lap in, and he goes eighth.
Stopwatch
While the track is quiet, Ricciardo goes even faster at the front of the field. He's 0.684s clear of Hamilton now with a 1m43.512s.
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Verstappen stays out. He'll be hoping he's not damaged those front tyres too much with that lock-up.
By: Geoff Creighton
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