Lewis Hamilton remained in a class of his own in the wet as just a single flying lap was enough to see him lead by a second in Practice 2 at the United States GP.
For a while it appeared the session could be washed out as heavy rain soaked the Circuit of the Americas for the first 45 minutes. Indeed, it was just after the halfway point that Brendon Hartley and Stoffel Vandoorne became the first to brave the conditions.
Also Read:
However, as conditions improved the vast majority of drivers opted to complete a little running but it was Hamilton’s single lap which made the biggest statement with a 1m48.716s on the intermediate tyre.
Pierre Gasly timed his running exactly right and would beat Kimi Raikkonen’s initial best time on the full wets using the same tyre. A late switch to inters saw the Frenchman improve to just over a second behind the lead Mercedes.
He was also 0.07s ahead of his 2019 teammate Max Verstappen as a five-lap run saw the Dutchman take third for Red Bull.
There would be a two-second gap back to Fernando Alonso in fourth, as the Spaniard also came out for a single flying lap in the closing minutes with Nico Hulkenberg fifth for Renault.
Hartley, having not run in the morning, completed the most laps of anyone with 19 and was sixth in the second Toro Rosso, ahead of Marcus Ericsson and Stoffel Vandoorne, as the McLaren driver also looked to get his eye in having missed Practice 1.
Completing the top 10 were the two Ferrari’s with Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel, however, their poor pace was explained by using the same intermediates which had done over 20 laps in the morning.
16 of the 20 drivers went out with Daniel Ricciardo, the two Haas drivers and Valtteri Bottas the four who opted to save their tyres with the prospect of further rain on Saturday.
Full results from Practice 2 can be seen below:
