F1 News, Reports and Race Results

Hamilton leads Vettel by 0.25s in FP2 in Canada

Lewis Hamilton continued to set the pace during practice for the Canadian Grand Prix, beating Sebastian Vettel by 0.25s in FP2.

Having been quickest in the opening session, Hamilton dipped below last year's pole position time by 0.2s with a lap of 1:14.212 on ultrasofts. Despite the impressive pace, Hamilton actually saw his advantage trimmed by Ferrari compared to Friday morning, with Vettel's time also coming on the ultrasoft tyre.

Nico Rosberg was third fastest but over half a second slower than his Mercedes team-mate, with the majority of the deficit coming in the opening two sectors. However, Hamilton's improvement in pace ensured the next closest challengers - the Red Bull pair of Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo - were the best part of a second off the pace.

Jenson Button was the surprise package of the session, bouncing back from a difficult FP1 to finish seventh quickest. While late to emerge after a power unit change, Button still managed to post a time of 1:15.213, leaving him with an identical time to Valtteri Bottas in sixth but below him on the times having been second to set it.

The 2009 world champion was 1.001s off the pace of Hamilton on a circuit which Button predicted McLaren could be surprisingly strong at. He was also 0.021s ahead of Kimi Raikkonen, although Vettel displayed the true pace of the Ferrari.

Nico Hulkenberg and Carlos Sainz completed the top ten ahead of Fernando Alonso, Sergio Perez and Felipe Massa. Massa managed 44 laps in FP2 following his crash this morning which Williams attributed to a DRS fault.

It was a very close session as just 0.4s covered Verstappen in fourth all the way down to Daniil Kvyat in 14th. Much of the focus of the long runs was on tyre life, with Rosberg managing to complete 29 laps on one set of ultrasoft tyres.

While FP1 saw times posted on a variety of different tyre compounds, all of the fastest laps in the second session were set on the purple-marked ultrasoft tyre.

Turn 1 proved tricky for a number of drivers during the afternoon, with Kvyat twice running off track at the opening corner and Romain Grosjean similarly cutting across the run-off area. Both Kvyat and team-mate Carlos Sainz brushed the wall at Turn 5 but neither driver sustained damage.

AS IT HAPPENED: Canadian Grand Prix FP2

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Chris Medland's 2016 Canadian Grand Prix preview

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Pos	Driver	Team	Time	Laps
01	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1:14.212	43
02	Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	1:14.469	45
03	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1:14.738	46
04	Max Verstappen	Red Bull	1:15.156	29
05	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull	1:15.168	43
06	Valtteri Bottas	Williams	1:15.213	46
07	Jenson Button	McLaren	1:15.213	35
08	Kimi Raikkonen	Ferrari	1:15.234	43
09	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India	1:15.321	50
10	Carlos Sainz	Toro Rosso	1:15.410	42
11	Fernando Alonso	McLaren	1:15.450	40
12	Sergio Perez	Force India	1:15.493	47
13	Felipe Massa	Williams	1:15.513	44
14	Daniil Kvyat	Toro Rosso	1:15.559	42
15	Romain Grosjean	Haas	1:16.093	35
16	Kevin Magnussen	Renault	1:16.255	39
17	Felipe Nasr	Sauber	1:16.582	40
18	Esteban Gutierrez	Haas	1:16.591	32
19	Marcus Ericsson	Sauber	1:16.902	51
20	Jolyon Palmer	Renault	1:17.001	48
21	Pascal Wehrlein	Manor	1:17.023	32
22	Rio Haryanto	Manor	1:17.423	49

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.