F1 News, Reports and Race Results

LIVE: Grand Prix of Europe FP2

Follow the second free practice session for this year's Grand Prix of Europe with all the action brought to you live with comprehensive as-it-happens live coverage from F1i.

The first session on this fascinating new street circuit in Baku proved to be a fairly quiet affair, teams and drivers perhaps still recovering from the very tight turnaround since last weekend's race in Canada and the long-haul dash across the Atlantic.

Everyone was simply finding their feet this morning, with Mercedes immediately on the pace to dominate the session although not without some serious pressure from Williams' Valtteri Bottas. In the end it was Lewis Hamilton who claimed the honours by 0.377s from his team mate Nico Rosberg, while Bottas was third ahead of an impressive Fernando Alonso in the McLaren.

It wasn't all plain sailing for Mercedes however, as Hamilton pushed too hard toward the end and made contact with the concrete barrier that contributed to his sitting out the final half hour of the session.

That was nothing compared to the woes at Red Bull Racing. With Max Verstappen only getting seven laps running before being sidelined by an oil leak, the team's fortunes weren't improved when Daniel Ricciardo made contact with the barrier in turn 15 which did a hefty bit of damage to his car and triggered the only red flag of the session. It's going to be a busy time in the Red Bull garage before the start of FP2!

As well as Williams and McLaren there was a healthy showing from Force India. Toro Rosso managed to get Carlos Sainz into the top ten late in the session by switching to supersofts, while Sebastian Vettel put Ferrari into the top five toward the end after a relatively quiet session for them.

We've yet to see any real evidence of any team truly finding a strategy that will successfully tackle the high-downforce twist sections of the track with the low-downforce needed along the two kilometre main straight. Whoever comes closest to the perfect solution will likely be standing on top of the podium on Sunday.

Since the end of FP1 there's been a bit of a scare about the track kerbs which might be damaging the tyres of the Formula One cars. GP2 qualifying was postponed in order to allow race director Charlie Whiting to carry out a full track inspection and decide on any necessary repairs before FP2.

We resume our live as-it-happens coverage from Baku with FP2, which assuming there are no delays because of the track repairs will start at 5pm local time (2pm BST) - we'll bring you all the news and information from trackside as it happens on F1i's live page.

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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.