Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFormula 1

Hamilton heads Vettel in FP2 in Spain

Lewis Hamilton set the fastest time of FP2 for the Spanish Grand Prix, beating Sebastian Vettel by 0.4s.

While Mercedes had been almost a second clear of the field in the opening practice session, Hamilton was pushed more closely by Vettel as Ferrari looked more competitive on the medium tyre. Hamilton's time of 1:26.852 left him a little under half a second clear of Vettel, with Nico Rosberg in third but 0.75s off his team-mate.

Kimi Raikkonen was fourth after complaining of a lack of grip on his opening run on medium tyres, with the Finn improving on his second flying lap to set a 1:27.780. Raikkonen was also unhappy late in the session, saying he wasn't learning anything towards the end of his long run.

While Red Bull again struggled with reliability problems - having completed just 16 laps in total in FP1 - there was some encouraging pace shown by Daniil Kvyat. Running with a new nose, Kvyat was fifth fastest and less than 0.2s slower than Raikkonen. Max Verstappen was with 0.1s of Kvyat as well, albeit 1.1s slower than Hamilton's time.

Jenson Button was an encouraging seventh quickest for McLaren, running an upgraded MP4-30 which also includes a new livery. However, Button said on Thursday he is more interested in the gap to the front than the overall position, and he was 1.6s slower than Hamilton, leaving him half a second behind Verstappen.

Valtteri Bottas, Carlos Sainz and Felipe Massa rounded out the top ten, with Fernando Alonso in 11th the only other driver within two seconds of Hamilton's time.

The aforementioned reliability problems for Red Bull struck Daniel Ricciardo, confining him to the garage until the final five minutes of the session. While it had looked like he would not take part at all in FP2, Ricciardo completed four laps and managed to get himself up to 13th place with his one flying attempt.

A largely uneventful session was interrupted with a brief red flag period following a strange moment for Romain Grosjean. At full speed on the pit straight, Grosjean's engine cover exploded, showering debris over the circuit which caused the session to be stopped. The Lotus returned to the pits with the engine exposed but was able to continue running later in the session.

Unusually, Hamilton's time on medium tyres was slower than the best lap from FP1, with Rosberg's morning effort of 1:26.828 on the hard compound.

Click here for a look at the revised McLaren-Honda MP4-30 livery

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Pos	Driver	Team	Time	Laps
01	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1:26.852	26
02	Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	1:27.260	37
03	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1:27.616	35
04	Kimi Raikkonen	Ferrari	1:27.780	36
05	Daniil Kvyat	Red Bull	1:27.943	25
06	Max Verstappen	Toro Rosso	1:28.017	32
07	Jenson Button	McLaren	1:28.494	31
08	Valtteri Bottas	Williams	1:28.525	39
09	Carlos Sainz	Toro Rosso	1:28.674	31
10	Felipe Massa	Williams	1:28.712	36
11	Fernando Alonso	McLaren	1:28.723	28
12	Romain Grosjean	Lotus	1:29.086	14
13	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull	1:29.098	4
14	Pastor Maldonado	Lotus	1:29.217	34
15	Felipe Nasr	Sauber	1:29.333	37
16	Marcus Ericsson	Sauber	1:29.361	34
17	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India	1:29.601	38
18	Sergio Perez	Force India	1:29.707	35
19	Will Stevens	Manor	1:31.929	30
20	Roberto Merhi	Manor	1:32.751	23

Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.