Championship leader Lando Norris set a foreboding pace in FP2 at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix ahead of title rival Max Verstappen, while McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri languished outside the top 10.
Norris needed only one flying lap on soft tires at sunset to set the session’s fastest time, lowering the benchmark to 1m 23.083s. It was enough to eclipse Verstappen by a significant 0.363s, the McLaren appearing much happier in the cooler evening conditions.
- Norris narrowly tops Verstappen in first Abu Dhabi GP practice
The bulk of the difference was in the street circuit-style final sector, where slow 90-degree turns predominate. McLaren was almost 0.3s quicker there alone, and Norris also had more than 0.15s in hand in the first sector, where Verstappen complained “too much” bouncing through the flat-out Turn 3.
Verstappen enjoyed a slender advantage through the middle split, which turns from Turn 5 hairpin and down the back two straights, including the joining chicane, where the Dutchman clawed back almost 0.1s.
Piastri couldn’t harness McLaren’s pace around Yas Marina, however. He was stuck in 11th place, where he lapped 0.68s slower than his session-topping teammate. The Australian had two attempts at setting a representative fast lap, but both were tainted by mistakes – the first at Turn 1, the second at the Turn 6-7 chicane.
Piastri was forced to skip FP1 to give McLaren IndyCar star Pato O’Ward a run to satisfy the team’s final obligation to field an inexperienced driver this year, and he appeared to be counting the cost, with the former title leader unhappy with the balance of his MCL39 throughout the session despite on-the-go tweaks to try to find a better balance.
It’s a problem that carried through to his high-fuel race simulation run on medium tires, during which he was slower than Norris, putting his already long-shot championship hopes at risk.
George Russell slotted into third, where the Mercedes driver was 0.379s slower than Norris and ended the session radioing that “the ride’s completely gone” despite a positive hour of track running.
Oliver Bearman was fourth, his Haas only 0.418s off the pace after a performance that very much pleased the British rookie. “Mate, the car is insane!” he radioed after setting his fastest lap. “I don’t know how the car is so good.”
Sauber teammates Nico Hulkenberg and Gabriel Bortoleto were closely matched almost half a second off the pace in fifth and sixth ahead of Racing Bull driver Isack Hadjar, who was 0.574s adrift.
Charles Leclerc was the fastest Ferrari driver, lapping 0.575s off the pace, a climb-down from the optimism of FP1, when he was less than 0.02s adrift of Norris.
Fernando Alonso was ninth for Aston Martin ahead of Mercedes’s Kimi Antonelli, who completed the top 10 at 0.625s down. Piastri followed ahead of Lance Stroll, Carlos Sainz, Lewis Hamilton and Alex Albon down to 15th.
Esteban Ocon was 16th for Haas, the Frenchman not as endeared to his car as teammate Bearman. Yuki Tsunoda followed in 17th ahead of Liam Lawson and Alpine teammates Franco Colapinto and Pierre Gasly at the bottom of the order.
RESULTS
