Max Verstappen completed a practice double for Red Bull as he posted the fastest time in a busy second session at the Canadian GP on Friday.
The Dutchman lowered his morning benchmark by over a second with a 1m12.198s, just over a tenth clear of Kimi Raikkonen as the Finn led Ferrari’s charge in P2.
Daniel Ricciardo had a troubled session losing around an hour of running while the team changed wiring and other components associated with his Renault engine to try and optimise its performance as it wasn’t running cleanly.
Eventually, he would emerge for the final 20 minutes and moved upto third in the final minutes with a run on the Hypersoft tyre.
Mercedes stuck by their alternative approach of using the Ultrasoft and Supersoft tyres throughout Friday with Lewis Hamilton almost six-tenths slower in fourth, yet still very much in the frame for pole and the win.
Valtteri Bottas continued to lag, however, in sixth place and almost three-tenths down on his world champion teammate.
Sebastian Vettel’s muted practice running also continued as he sat in the garage following a prolonged setup change, yet the German still didn’t appear comfortable with his Ferrari as he was only fifth fastest completing a total of just 43 laps on the day.
Behind the top three teams, the times were very close as just over half a second covered P7 to P16.
Leading that group was Romain Grosjean in the upgraded Haas, but the Frenchman’s day was blighted by hitting a groundhog towards the end of the session on the approach to the final chicane, damaging his front wing of which the American team has only one spare.
Force India always go well on low downforce circuits and Montreal is no different with Esteban Ocon and Sergio Perez eighth and ninth respectively.
Completing the top 10 was Fernando Alonso in his McLaren, as the Spaniard looks to simply score points on his 300th Grand Prix weekend.
Charles Leclerc impressed in P11 for Sauber, just ahead of Brendon Hartley’s Toro Rosso, their positions may be slightly advanced, however, after several incidents including drivers that would be expected to be faster.
The two Renaults were well down the order as Nico Hulkenberg, in 14th, looked to recover from missing the first session following a gearbox problem but teammate Carlos Sainz would hit the wall exiting Turn 7, requiring a red flag to clear up the debris.
Stoffel Vandoorne also caused a Virtual Safety Car period after hitting the wall exiting Turn 9 and stopping just after the hairpin with a suspected broken suspension.
Williams’ problems continue as they brought up the field once again. Lance Stroll was even warned his approach could lead to a second crash of the day at one point but the hometown driver would finish slightly ahead of teammate Sergey Sirotkin albeit 2.5 seconds off the pace.
Full times from the session can be seen below:
