Silverstone, FP2: Vettel takes over at the top

Sebastian Vettel set the pace in the second practice for this weekend’s British Grand Prix at Silverstone, with the Ferrari driver edging Friday morning’s quickest man, Lewis Hamilton, by just under two tenths of a second.

There was more trouble for Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, however. The Dutch driver had stopped on track at the end of the morning session with a mechanical issue and his afternoon session ended early when he crashed out midway through his opening run.

Verstappen lost control of his RB14 on the exit of Luffield corner and spun into the barriers, damaging the rear of his car. The impact to his car was severe enough that he would play no further part in the session.

At the time the red flags were shown for the Red Bull driver’s crash, Ferrari’s Kimi Räikkonen sat at the top of the timesheet and when the session re-started, the Finn was one of the first to bolt on soft tyres for his qualifying simulation. His His best time of 1:28.045 gave him a solid margin at the top of the order but team-mate Vettel was preparing for his run and his time of 1m27.552s sent him to the top of the timesheet.

Mercedes Valtteri Bottas then slotted into P2 behind the championship leader but then Hamilton crossed the line a time of 1:27.739 to secure second place – 0.187s behind Vettel.

Raikkonen dropped to fourth ahead of the second Red Bull of Daniel Ricciardo who ended up 0.856s off Vettel’s best.

The Australian was the last man within a second of the German, with McLaren’s Fernando Alonso best-of-the-rest in sixth place a sizeable 1.754s behind Vettel. Renault’s Nico Hulkenberg was seventh ahead of the Force India pairing of Esteban Ocon and Sergio Perez. Charles Leclerc rounded out the top 10, a full two seconds adrift of the P1 pace.

Verstappen wasn’t the only driver to encounter problems during the session. Toro Rosso’s Pierre Gasly was also forced out of the session early on with a suspected power unit issue.