Monaco GP Thursday practice
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By: Geoff Creighton
Summary
Status: Stopped
That's a wrap for our Thursday practice coverage (and I personally went all day without calling it 'Friday practice', so go me).
See you on Saturday for what will hopefully be a slightly closer fight between Mercedes and the rest - although anything like that will probably require some rain intervention:
See you on Saturday for what will hopefully be a slightly closer fight between Mercedes and the rest - although anything like that will probably require some rain intervention:
Mercedes' best day in recent memory in Monaco? Might be. There's a huge gap between the Silver Arrows and their rivals over a single lap, and they look in stellar shape in race trim too.
Final order: 1 Hamilton, 2 Bottas, 3 Vettel, 4 Gasly, 5 Albon, 6 Verstappen, 7 Magnussen, 8 Giovinazzi, 9 Raikkonen, 10 Leclerc, 11 Grosjean, 12 Norris, 13 Sainz, 14 Kvyat, 15 Perez, 16 Hulkenberg, 17 Ricciardo, 18 Stroll, 19 Russell, 20 Kubica.
The chequered flag is out for Thursday's track action. Mercedes end the day on top, Hamilton leading Bottas by 0.081s.
The two Mercedes cars are in the pits, so that's their FP2 done. The chequered flag will follow shortly.
"The car has no grip at all, sliding, understeering," Verstappen adds. He's told to pit if he's not happy with it, and obliges.
Gasly reports a burning smell in his RB15, while team-mate Verstappen bluntly says "car is not good" as he struggles to improve.
So, while we don't know the fuel loads, engine programmes and other variables, this really does not look great from Ferrari - Vettel has had more or less midfield pace on this soft-tyre run, over a second adrift of the Mercedes pair.
Ten minutes left on the clock, Verstappen heading back out and - assuming he's on a low-fuel run - he should be able to challenge for the top three at least, if he gets a decent lap in.
We have Vettel and Gasly on long runs and Gasly's laps - on soft tyres that are of a similar age to Hamilton - are reasonably comparable. Vettel's... are not.
Under a quarter of an hour left to run, the W10s' pace has dipped somewhat into the 1m15s margin, but nobody else has looked anywhere near anyway. Still not clear what the Red Bulls and Ferraris can do in race trim.
Vettel locks up at Ste Devote and manages to get his SF90 stopped just short of the red barrier. Very close to being a shunt, and those tyres are probably no longer usable.
Ricciardo unhappy about having Stroll ahead of him on track. That's at least the third time today the Canadian has drawn the ire of his F1 rivals.
Deep into long run territory now, the Mercedes cars are lapping in the mid-to-high 1m14s range. No race-run programme laptimes from their usual rivals yet.
After his earlier braking problems and overall discontent with the SF90, Leclerc is back on track, pushing but not improving.
All teams having run on softs, here's how they rank right now on ultimate pace: 1 Mercedes, 2 Ferrari, 3 Red Bull, 4 Toro Rosso, 5 Haas, 6 Alfa Romeo, 7 McLaren, 8 Racing Point, 9 Renault, 10 Williams.
Hamilton is quickest of all in the first two sectors and wrestles the top spot back from Bottas, courtesy of a 1m11.118s.
The only driver who looks to have the capacity to run anywhere near the Mercedes cars is Verstappen, and he's out of the car right now, as Red Bull works on a suspected water leak in his RB15.
And now Bottas responds, improving to a 1m11.199s. We're now six tenths up on the FP2 benchmark from last year.
Hamilton finally gets a clean lap together and it's a 1m11.245s, 0.030s quicker than Bottas. Faster in sector one, faster in sector two, but over a tenth slower in sector three.
Gasly is now up to fourth place, 0.663s off Bottas' pace. Better, but probably still not quite at the Red Bull RB15's ultimate pace.
Bottas follows up his previous lap with one that's 0.017s slower - and Hamilton is about to join him at the top of the timing screens.
Gasly's struggling to make much progress on new softs, which take him to sixth place - behind Albon and Verstappen, the latter yet to run a second set.
Bottas gives it another go on his soft-tyre run and improves to a 1m11.275s. That's a lot more ominous as far as the possibility of not getting a Mercedes 1-2 is concerned.
Not looking too great for Renault so far - after a strong FP1 showing, it has Hulkenberg in P14 and Ricciardo in P17. And both have already done laps on a fresh set of softs.
Bottas goes top for Mercedes on softs, posting a 1m11.597s. Only three tenths up on Vettel, so could've been worse for Ferrari and the rest of the field.
We're probably a couple of minutes away from seeing a full-tilt soft-tyre run from Bottas, which should give us a better idea of how much trouble Ferrari's in here.
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