Raikkonen fastest on Friday for Ferrari as Vettel taps out

Kimi Raikkonen put Ferrari on top in the second free practice session on Friday for this weekend's Singapore Grand Prix.

Raikkonen just pipped Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton to the top spot, with the pair well ahead of Red Bull's Max Verstappen and the rest of the field.

It wasn't such a good day for Raikkonen's team mate. Sebastian Vettel tapped the wall during his flying lap attempt, and thereafter remained sidelined for the rest of the session as the engineers hunted down a fluid leak on his bruised SF71H.

2018 Singapore Grand Prix - Free Practice 2

The sun had set and night had fallen in the two and a half hours since the end of FP1. The ribbon of track winding its way through Marina Bay was picked out under the dazzling floodlights ready for Haas' Romain Grosjean to lead the cars back out for the second 90-minute session of the day.

Valtteri Bottas put Mercedes at the top of the times before Ferrari moved into action, with first Sebastian Vettel and then Kimi Raikkonen going faster. Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo demonstrated that Red Bull couldn't be counted out by going faster still, although Verstappen also reported odd behaviour from his engine during the session.

Lewis Hamilton likewise soon made his presence felt. As he and Vettel scrapped over the top time, they also tangled on the track with a near-miss which forced Hamilton to take to the run-off at turn 14 rather than run into the rear of the Ferrari.

At the half hour mark, Bottas changed the game with a run on hypersoft tyres that found a whole second over the rest of the field up to that point. He clocked in at 1:39.368s despite a lairy moment running wide out of the final corner.

Hamilton quickly put even that in the shade with his own run, which was 0.658s faster still, only for Raikkonen to immediately nip ahead of the Briton by 11 thousandths. The pair were by now half a second ahead of Verstappen, Ricciardo, Bottas and Renault's Carlos Sainz, with Grosjean seventh ahead of McLaren's Fernando Alonso.

Hamilton's attempt to respond ended with the Mercedes running through turn 1 rather than locking up and ruining another set of tyres. Vettel's own flying run also went awry, his right rear throwing up a shower of sparks after brushing the wall exiting the corner.

The Ferrari immediately aborted the run and dived down pit road for a health check. The engineers found fluid leaking from the back, suggesting internal damage to the radiator cooling pipes. It meant Vettel ended the session ninth fastest and missed out on the ensuing long distance simulations.

Vettel hadn't been the only driver getting up close and personal with the barriers at Marina Bay. Brendon Hartley also had a lucky escape during the session, brushing the wall although in the Kiwi's case without damaging the Toro Rosso in the process.

Marcus Ericsson had a scare of his own toward the end of the session when he lost the backend of the Sauber coming out of turn 5. He was lucky not to be collected by Alonso, who had been running immediately behind him at the time. A less dramatic moment for Pierre Gasly saw the Toro Rosso overshoot pit entry and mount the kerb separating it from the main track.

There was a problem of a different sort for Lance Stroll, when the brakes on the right rear of his Williams visibly caught fire after a tear-off got stuck in the cooling duct. He was able to get back to the Williams garage and the matter soon attended to.

In any case, both Stroll and his team mate Sergei Sirotkin ended Friday as slowest of the 20 runners, three and a half seconds off Raikkonen's target time.

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