French GP: Sainz leads a Ferrari one-two in Practice 2

Carlos Sainz led Charles Leclerc as Ferrari stayed on top in Practice 2 at the French Grand Prix.

The Spaniard made a big improvement on the third flying lap of his soft tyre run to set a 1m32.527s, a tenth faster than his Monegasque teammate.

On the contrary, Verstappen only managed one push lap and had understeer issues in third, half a second behind Sainz. A positive for the Dutchman was his pace in the middle sector thanks to the top speed of the RB18 along the Mistral Straight.

The two Mercedes’ ran fourth and fifth, George Russell finished ahead of teammate Lewis Hamilton, who was on track for the first time this weekend after giving his car to Nyck De Vries in FP1.

Lando Norris led the midfield pack in sixth, with Pierre Gasly continuing to show much better pace in the upgraded AlphaTauri in seventh.

Kevin Magnussen was eighth as Daniel Ricciardo and Sergio Perez rounded out the top 10, the Mexican lacked pace in the second Red Bull.

Fernando Alonso finished 11th and Esteban Ocon 18th as Alpine’s underwhelming start continued.

Like Hamilton, Valtteri Bottas also missed FP1 and was P12 in his first weekend session in the Alfa Romeo.

The two Aston Martins were 13th and 15th, while Alex Albon dropped to 16th after finishing in the top 10 earlier in the day.

Mick Schumacher avoided the barriers in a high-speed spin at Le Beausset early, but it would compromise his session as the German finished 19th.

Nicholas Latifi propped up the timesheet.

Before this weekend, much of the talk was about tyre management in the hot conditions expected at Le Castellet.

During the longer runs to complete FP2 though, only Charles Leclerc appeared to have significant degradation as the medium compound held up better than expected.

Full results from Practice 2 can be seen below: