Practice 2 was a Mercedes show of force at the Monaco Grand Prix, as Lewis Hamilton posted the quickest time.
The session began with the Briton and teammate Valtteri Bottas topping the timesheet using the medium tyres for their first series of timed laps, compared to the rest on the soft compound.
It was then followed by the two Silver Arrows streaking away from the rest in the qualifying simulations, as Hamilton posted the best time of 1m11.118s.
His Finnish partner was just 0.081s behind in second, with their lap times 0.3s slower than last year’s pole time set by Daniel Ricciardo.
Consolidating Mercedes’ dominance was a 0.7s gap back to Sebastian Vettel in third for Ferrari, just ahead of Pierre Gasly in the Red Bull.
An impressive session for Alex Albon would see the Toro Rosso driver in fifth place and leading the midfield pack.
This as Max Verstappen missed much of the session to a combination of set-up and mechanical issues and would only finish sixth.
Kevin Magnussen followed in seventh ahead of the two Alfa Romeo’s led by Antonio Giovinazzi.
Charles Leclerc would round out the top 10 for Ferrari as his attempted qualifying run was ruined by a lock-up into the Nouvelle chicane, leaving the Monegasque without a representative time.
The gaps in the midfield were as tight as you’d expect with less than 0.4s covering P5 to P13.
Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz would offer McLaren a little more optimism as they moved up to 12th and 13th in the afternoon.
At Renault, however, it was the opposite as Nico Hulkenberg and Daniel Ricciardo slumped to a lowly 16th and 17th.
Were that to be replicated in qualifying, they would be battling with the two Racing Point drivers to avoid Q1 elimination.
Lance Stroll’s struggles continued in 18th, however, ahead of the two Williams’ in their now customary positions at the back.
The drama would be muted to the usual lock-ups into Sainte Devote and Mirabeau, Vettel, in particular, was lucky to avoid the barrier at Turn 1.
Apart from that, it was a strong day of running on the streets of Monte Carlo, one dominated by Mercedes once again.
Full results from Practice 2 can be seen below:
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