Practice Two was under way in Baku, after Red Bull appeared to have the edge of Ferrari in the first session, with the Maranello team unable to keep pace with his rivals. Ferrari’s low load rear wing, which was initially brought but not used in Miami, was run on both F1-75 cars in this second free practice session for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
There was good news for Mick Schumacher after his struggles earlier today. The Ferrari junior was only able to manage very limited running after technical issues forced him to stop out on track during P1. However, Haas have carried out their repairs and Mick was back on track.
Carlos Sainz swiftly went more than a second faster than the Mercedes, before his team-mate Charles Leclerc went another second quicker to secure a big advantage at the top of the standings. There was also an impressive time from Fernando Alonso, who betters Carlos Sainz’s time to go second for Alpine. Charles Leclerc was aided by a nice slipstream up the home straight. Carlos then restored the Ferrari one-two by closing to within 0.5s of his Maranello team-mate. The Monegasque driver looked like he might be able to go even faster as he set a purple first sector time, but was ultimately unable to improve.
It was looking like another intriguing battle between Ferrari and Red Bull. Sergio Perez briefly went second with a time that is just a little over 0.1s off Charles Leclerc’s effort, but he was demoted to third as Max Verstappen gets within a whisker of the Ferrari. Max Verstappen improved his time but it was not enough to improve his position. A 1:43.580 moved him closer to his team-mate Sergio Perez in P2 and the leader Charles Leclerc. Fernando Alonso is holding onto fourth ahead of Carlos, who had seen his recent efforts at a clean lap interrupted.
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For Ferrari the session ended with a somewhat troublesome moment: “There is a problem with the engine no?” says Charles Leclerc to his garage. As he starts to go slow, his team says they will get back to him. They think that everything is fine with his car and tell him to push to which Charles replies: “So a loss of power is normal?”
Still, it was a quiet end to the second session of today and Charles Leclerc finished top of the timesheet with a 1:43.224. Sergio Perez ended FP2 just +0.248s behind him in 2nd, with Verstappen in 3rd and Alonso in 4th. It will be considered a disappointing session for Mercedes with George Russell finishing in 7th and Lewis Hamilton out of the top ten in 12th. Elsewhere, Carlos Sainz finished 5th and Lando Norris finished off the top ten!
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