Canadian GP Friday practice
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By: Geoff Creighton
Summary
Status: Stopped
That's it from us after a Friday of two halves, as Hamilton follows up an imperious FP1 showing with an uncharacteristic blunder, while Ferrari suddenly takes the fight to Mercedes.
Check back with Autosport and Motorsport.com for post-session reaction, and we'll see you tomorrow for the resumption of track action.
Check back with Autosport and Motorsport.com for post-session reaction, and we'll see you tomorrow for the resumption of track action.
FP2 results: 1 Leclerc, 2 Vettel, 3 Bottas, 4 Sainz, 5 Magnussen, 6 Hamilton, 7 Perez, 8 Ricciardo, 9 Hulkenberg, 10 Stroll, 11 Norris, 12 Gasly, 13 Verstappen, 14 Albon, 15 Kvyat, 16 Raikkonen, 17 Grosjean, 18 Giovinazzi, 19 Russell, 20 Kubica.
Sainz's fantastic day continues as he seems to be occasionally in the same laptime range as Bottas on this run, on the same tyres of a similar age.
Vettel, who had traded his worn softs for less-worn mediums some minutes ago, goes straight on at the final chicane.
On tyres that are approaching 25-30 laps, Bottas is fairly reliably in the mid-1m16s range (hards), while Leclerc is in mid-1m17s (mediums). Tyre drop-off or genuine pace difference?
Replays show Bottas' W10 shedding some parts on the straight out of the hairpin, and Leclerc just managing to dodge the debris.
The Stroll/Grosjean run-in "will be investigated after the session". Presumably both will be summoned to the stewards.
Under 10 minutes left in the session now. It will almost certainly be a Ferrari 1-2 in the Friday classification.
There was a run-in between Stroll and Grosjean into the final chicane, which forced the Frenchman to cut the corner and prompted a "mate!" on the radio.
A potential good sign for Mercedes is that Bottas' race-run laptimes on hards are comparable, and probably even superior, to what Leclerc is managing on a softer tyre.
It might be a simple matter of graining, going by what we're picking up on team radio. Grosjean, on a long C5 run, is told other drivers are "driving through it".
Vettel has been kept out on the soft tyres by Ferrari, and his times dip into the 1m20s range. It could be traffic - he's back into 1m19s next time by - but it does look like the C5s are not holding up at all.
Gasly and Verstappen have now returned to the track. The former is on a soft-tyre race run, the latter is seemingly pushing for a laptime but not improving.
Meanwhile, Leclerc, who has been firmly in the 1m17s range on mediums, says he's "overheating as crazy".
"The rears are melting away", Vettel reports as he puts a 13th lap onto his current C5 compound. His laptime is down to high-1m18s - it looked similar for Bottas, but the drop-off is very significant.
The two Ferraris and Bottas are logging laptimes of various quality, but there's no race running yet from the two Red Bulls, who have remained in the pits ever since Verstappen slapped the wall and Gasly concluded his own qualifying sim.
"It's terrible," Magnussen says. He's asked "balance is terrible? tyres are terrible?" and replies "yeah, just no rear".
An update to Giovinazzi - he's overtaken the two Williams cars after five laps, and sits 2.7s off the pace. But given the circumstances and the fact he's running the hard tyre, that's really not too bad.
Norris has improved to 11th with his second attempt at a qualifying-spec flyer, but he remains seven tenths slower than Sainz.
Norris has finally done a flying lap on the soft tyre, but he ends up P14 and is well adrift of team-mate Sainz.
Bottas is the only frontrunning car out on track right now, and his laptimes suggest he's into a race run on the soft tyre.
"We've still got an issue with front locking - Turn 2, Turn 10. Especially end of brakes," Russell reports.
To put into context how good that lap from Sainz is looking, it's almost four tenths between himself and Magnussen in fifth - while only a quarter of a second separates Magnussen and 10th-placed Stroll.
Stroll improves to 10th, 0.994s off the pace, while replays show Gasly suffering a massive lock-up of the left front into Turn 1 and going straight on.
Current top 10: 1 Leclerc, 2 Vettel, 3 Bottas, 4 Sainz, 5 Magnussen, 6 Hamilton, 7 Perez, 8 Ricciardo, 9 Hulkenberg, 10 Gasly.
A word for that Sainz improvement - he's up into fourth place, 0.376s behind Leclerc. That must've been an absolutely sublime lap.
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