Bottas leads Mercedes 1-2 dominance in 2nd French GP practice

Hamilton Spin

It is again a Mercedes one-two in the 2nd practice session for the French GP, this time headed by the Finn at 1m30.937s, some 0.424s faster than his teammate Lewis Hamilton.

That doesn't tell the true story though, with Hamilton having to explain himself to the stewards later after a messy slide…

Replays show Hamilton losing the rear into Turn 4 and sliding across the corner in dramatic fashion, wiping out the fluorescent yellow bollard for good measure.

He rejoined slowly, Verstappen on a flying lap decided to run wide through the corner rather than abort, and wound up sliding off as a result.

Unsafe? The stewards will decide later on.

Charles Leclerc and Sebastian Vettel were 3rd and 4th for Ferrari while Lando Norris rounded out the top-5 for McLaren..

FIA enforces track limit rules

The FIA has moved to clamp down any potential corner cutting ahead of the French Grand Prix weekend at the Circuit Paul Ricard.

The nature of the track, which has prominently been used as a test venue in recent years, means that there is a lot of runoff for the drivers if they make a mistake.

However, there have been bollards and signs placed around the circuit in order to stop the drivers taking advantage of the runoff area, ensuring they will lose time and rejoin the circuit safely if they do so.

At Turn 2, two yellow bollards have appeared along with some red and white signage to indicate where a driver should rejoin the circuit.

The event notes states: “Any driver who fails to negotiate Turn 2 by using the track, and who passes completely to the right of the first fluorescent yellow bollard on the apex of the corner, must keep completely to the right of the fluorescent yellow bollard and re-join the track by driving through the two arrays of blocks in the run-off by passing to the right of the first and to the left of the second."

A similar system has been enforced further on in the first sector, at Turns 3 through to 5: “Any driver who fails to negotiate Turn 4 by using the track, and who passes completely to the left of the fluorescent yellow bollard on the apex of the corner, must keep completely to the left of the fluorescent yellow bollard and re-join the track by driving to the left of two blocks in the run-off prior to Turn 5."

The rules will not strictly apply to free practice sessions, and each case will be handled and analyzed differently depending on the circumstance.

Quotes

Valtteri Bottas
It was not easy in the beginning; everyone struggled in the morning because the track was much more slippery than usual. But the track ramped up quickly, I could feel big gains on a lap-by-lap basis, especially in the corners. The more the track improved, the better the balance of the car felt. Despite the balance issues, the car was quick out of the box which is always a good start. We've made good changes between the sessions and I felt much more comfortable in FP2, which is why the lap time was better. It's really warm out there, and it will only get warmer, so tyres are going to be on the limit, especially on Sunday. We still struggle with the balance over the course of the entire lap, so we'll have a good look at the data tonight to see what we can improve for tomorrow.

Lewis Hamilton
It's been very hot today, but we got through most of the programme. It's been a bit difficult with the balance of the car; maybe that's to do with the new tarmac they have here and the high temperatures, I think the track reached 55 to 60 degrees today. In general, the car pace is really good, we just have to fine-tune the balance. I didn't do a very good FP2 lap, I had a big snap into Turn 3 which I thought was a good catch, but ultimately I had a small issue with the Power Unit afterwards and had to come to the garage. Otherwise it's been a smooth day with no major problems.

Andrew Shovlin
It's been an interesting day from the point of view of the tyres and the car performance. All the cornering regions of the circuit have been recently resurfaced and it was clear that the Soft tyre was suffering quite badly on the new tarmac. Our pace looked pretty good, but the balance was really messy due to poor grip from the rear tyres. We made some changes over the break to help calm the car down and both drivers felt it was better in the afternoon. Valtteri had a clean session, his pace on low fuel was good and the long run was consistent. Lewis was finding it a bit harder to get the balance of the car in the right place and he made a mistake on his Soft tyre run. We would have continued on that tyre, but we detected a misfire shortly after and brought the car in to investigate. We were able to get back out to do some long run work after fixing the issue and the car looked to be working well for Lewis on race fuel. We have a bit of work to do tonight to see if we can further improve the rear end, but we seem to have a decent car to work with. So, overall we are quite happy.

Practice 2 Results