Spa-Francorchamps, 24 August – Kimi Raikkonen was fastest in the second free practice session with a best lap of 1’43”335. In the other SF71H, team-mate Sebastian Vettel posted a 1’44”129, good enough for fifth. Unlike the morning session, this afternoon, the drivers ran different tyre programmes. The Finn started on Mediums before switching to Softs and Supersoft. The German began on the yellow banded tyres, before trying the Supersofts and then Mediums for long runs. Tomorrow’s final practice session gets underway at 12:00 before qualifying starts at 15h00.
Sebastian Vettel echoed his teammate’s comments on Ferrari’s upgraded engine and added its performance should be judged over the course of the next two races.
“It’s a bit difficult to know already,” Vettel explained. Also next week Monza is nearly a pure power track. We’ll see what the next two weeks bring. For now, everyone seems quite happy that the engine is doing what it’s supposed to do.”
Vettel set the pace in opening practice but struggled in FP2 and was forced to abort his first push lap when he ran wide at Stavelot.
The German ultimately improved to set the fourth-quickest time and was 0.7s adrift of Raikkonen, but insisted he has more time to find in the car.
“I think today has been OK. The car felt not yet where I want it to be, I think we need to do some work. Kimi maybe was a bit happier on one lap. But we still have a bit of time,” he said.
“We have a bit of margin, there’s quite a bit more in the car, I need to make sure I get to it tomorrow. Here is important if you’re confident to get the right timing as there isn’t much time to think, when to turn in and so on because the cars are quite fast. It needs to click. On one lap, it didn’t click. But overall, it’s going in the right way.”
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