Bottas tops Abu Dhabi practice 2 despite crashing

Bottas and Grosjean tangle

Mercedes Valtteri Bottas' finished on top of second Abu Dhabi GP practice with a time of 1m36.256s to make it a clean sweep for the day, but it wasn't the perfect evening for the Finn after he collided with the Haas of Romain Grosjean towards the end of the session, in a move that left the Frenchman rather irate.

Mercedes did well to get Bottas back out before the end of the session – but it remains to be seen how much damage was inflicted on Grosjean's Haas, and whether he might end up with any penalties as a result.

Leclerc brushes the barrier trying to catch the Mercedes drivers

Lewis Hamilton was 2nd quick in the #44 Mercedes 0.310s behind his teammate.

So all in all, an interesting session. The takeaway though is that Mercedes look quick – as they always tend to here. Charles Leclerc (3rd quick), who brushed the Turn 19 barrier with his Ferrari likewise looks the most likely to take the fight to the Silver Arrows, with seemingly a little bit more pace around here than his teammate Sebastian Vettel who finished up in 4th.

Max Verstappen rounded out the top-5 for Red Bull 0.551s behind Bottas. Verstappen’s fastest lap was half a second faster than his Red Bull team mate Alex Albon’s, however.

In seventh-place it was Haas’s Grosjean – whose session was brought to a halt after that collision with Bottas – as he finished three-tenths behind Albon. His team mate Kevin Magnussen was 14th, half a second slower than Grosjean.

Sergio Perez has scored points in every Abu Dhabi GP since 2013 and finished a promising P8 in FP2, 0.014s ahead of Toro Rosso’s Daniil Kvyat. Kvyat’s team mate Pierre Gasly rounded out the top 10 that was split by 1.514s.

Quotes

Valtteri Bottas
It's been a good day out on track; the car was well-balanced from the get-go. I had to take a fresh engine for the weekend which also seems be to working well. My pace looked competitive in both sessions, so from that perspective we've definitely started the last race weekend of the season off on the right foot, although I'm sure there's still room for improvement for tomorrow. The track was a bit dusty on the first few runs in FP1, but it evolved quickly and then felt pretty good all through the session. The end of my FP2 session was compromised by a minor incident with Grosjean; I thought he had seen me going for the overtake on the inside, but by the time I realized that he hadn't seen me, there was no way for me to escape anymore.

Lewis Hamilton
It's been a bit of an usual Friday for me; I was struggling to get into the rhythm today, but you have your good and bad days. Nonetheless, the car still felt good, but there's definitely areas that we can work on as a team and areas for me to work on personally. I'll just sit down tonight and make sure to get that straight for tomorrow. I've been trying to explore some new avenues with the car. We already know where it works well, so I'm pushing the car into different places, just trying to see if there's anywhere else I can exploit the car and the tires for the future.

James Allison
It's been a pretty good day, Valtteri was strong from the outset in FP1 and kept that good pace going in FP2 on the low fuel and also in the race simulation runs. Lewis took a little bit longer to find his rhythm with the car but seems to have got that now and was certainly fast and very effective in the long runs. The car is behaving itself and we're hopefully of a good day tomorrow. Although we've had a strong day today, it's pretty clear from looking at the Ferrari and the Red Bull that they've got pace in their car as well, so it'll be an exciting day tomorrow in Qualifying where there'll be no room for error.

Max Verstappen
“Overall, it was a pretty decent Friday. I’m not entirely happy with the balance yet and there are of course still some things we need to look at and do better but overall I’m pretty pleased. Mercedes look very strong here again and will be hard to beat but I still think it will be close tomorrow. We will analyze the tire data later today but overall there are no real surprises. The soft is quick over one lap and on race runs it drops off as expected."

Alex Albon
“It was tricky out there but overall today was good and we’re getting there. It’s difficult to get the tires working and there’s quite a lot of dust down so that’s why we saw a lot of cars spinning. The balance was ok and we know we need to improve a little bit here and there but Max looked quick so let’s see how things go tomorrow. I think I’ve got a little bit of fine tuning to do on my side, especially in sector three, but we’re chipping away. The Ferraris will of course be quick in qualifying but let’s see where we are come qualifying."

Dave Robson, Williams Senior Race Engineer
We enjoyed a productive Friday as we conducted testing in the hot conditions of FP1 before turning our attention to qualifying and race preparation in FP2. The red flags in both sessions disrupted the flow a little, but, nonetheless, we adapted well and completed everything that we had planned. The cooler conditions in FP2, and the relatively soft compounds available at this event, helped improve the handling of the car, and this was particularly to George’s liking. Unfortunately, Robert was less happy in FP2 than he had been in FP1, and this is something that we will be looking at overnight. Tomorrow will be another day of two halves, with the track hot in FP3 before again cooling down before, and during qualifying. We will not pay too much attention to FP3 and instead will try to build on our FP2 findings as we seek the best balance for qualifying. Although we are rapidly approaching the end of a long and tricky season, it is inspiring to see that the team continues to work hard, professionally, and effectively. Their tireless efforts are very much appreciated, and their dedication to the cause will prove to be excellent preparation for next season.

George Russell
The car was feeling nice to drive, probably one of the best of the year, but the pace was quite slow. It was tricky around the circuit, because it changes a lot from FP1 to FP2 as the conditions get cooler and it turns from day to night. I was enjoying it and it was good fun to drive. I felt that I learnt something from FP2 in the long runs, especially after the red flag as our pace was stronger in relative terms. I have not been feeling great, but the session was good for me and I feel fine to drive, which is the most important thing.

Robert Kubica
Today was quite a mixture. The first session was surprisingly good for the conditions we had on the track. I was pretty happy with the balance and with the things we were trying, which were more for next year. Normally FP2 is a better session in the cooler conditions and with lower track temperatures, but for us it was the opposite. We need to try and get back to having the behavior and feeling of the car I had in FP1, so, as always, we will try our best, and hopefully it will work better tomorrow than it did this afternoon.

Lance Stroll
"The car looks pretty competitive, but obviously we don’t know what set-up and fuel loads the rest of the teams are running today so we will see what tomorrow brings. There are some things to look over tonight, but our pace in the second session gives us confidence for the rest of the weekend. We have a good balance here so it’s about optimizing our package tomorrow. Every weekend is important but we definitely want to finish off the season on a high."

Sergio Perez
"It has been a good day and our pace in FP2 was competitive. The evening session is generally the most representative so I’m feeling quite optimistic. Tomorrow is looking very tight and I think one or two tenths will make the difference between making Q3 and missing out. If we are able to put everything together and find a bit of rhythm and pace tomorrow, we can secure a good result in qualifying. Our race pace is also looking competitive so hopefully we can carry this forward into Sunday."

Raikkonen

Kimi Raikkonen (car number 7):
“Laptimes say very little on Fridays so I won’t focus too much on that. We still have to work on things, look at all the data we collected and make an improvement ahead of tomorrow. Only when we get to qualifying we will have a clear idea of where we really stand against the rest."

Antonio Giovinazzi (car number 99):
“We looked strong in FP1, but tomorrow’s qualifying conditions will look a lot more like FP2 when it was cooler. We will need to check everything we learnt today, come up with a good setup and put it all together when it matters. I made a small mistake when pushing, but didn’t touch the wall. In the end, you’re trying to find the limit and this is what practice is for. The track is quite long and the gaps are naturally bigger, but the battle in the midfield will still be close. We will need to analyze all the data we got tonight and make the right choices for tomorrow."

Daniil Kvyat (STR14-03, Car 26)
“It was a productive day, FP1 wasn’t so important as the conditions are different to the conditions we race in, but it’s still useful to get some reference points and see how the car behaves. FP2 was also productive, all of the laps were important because the conditions are more representative for the race, so it was good to put so many laps in during the session. We’ll see when we study the data tonight what we need to do with the car for tomorrow. I felt quite good with the car today, but it doesn’t mean we can stop working and leave everything like this, things change over the weekend and we need to adapt."

Pierre Gasly (STR14-04, Car 10)
“It was a bit of a messy FP1 between the red flags and getting blocked on my second run, so it wasn’t an ideal session as we didn’t do many laps. The good thing was we were still able to test a couple of things we had planned. FP2 was a better session, as between the two cars we completed more testing ahead of Qualifying and the race, so now we have good things to analyze to decide what’s the best configuration for tomorrow. I’m happy with this afternoon, the long-run pace was strong and I think there’s more to come in the short runs. To finish in the top ten today makes us feel positive."

Jonathan Eddolls (Chief Race Engineer):
“We didn’t have the easiest FP1 session today and this was reflected on the timing sheets. We ran the Option first followed by the Prime, which was never going to help flatter us, and we came here with a number of test items, which were unfortunately interrupted by the red flags. This means we were a little bit on the back foot during that session. Yas Marina is a track where it’s easy to get stuck in traffic, and this happened particularly to Pierre as he struggled to get a clean lap. For Dany, the car balance was quite good in FP1, while Pierre struggled a little bit more. We did a lot of analysis on the data and made a number of changes going into FP2, so we had a cleaner session this afternoon. We were able to show the true competitiveness of the car over the short runs with both cars ending the day in the top 10, which is where they should be, so that was positive. In the long runs, the Option tire showed to be quite stable, but there is still some work to do, particularly if we make it to Q3 tomorrow as it would be the race start tire. The performance on the other two compounds on the long runs looked pretty good, so there’s still a lot to analyze tonight, but I think we can look forward to a reasonable performance for the rest of the weekend."

Toyoharu Tanabe (Honda F1 Technical Director):
“From a PU point of view, everything went smoothly today across both teams. In FP2 when conditions were similar to those we will experience in qualifying and the race, all four of our cars were in the top ten, which is a solid performance. However, we still have plenty of work to do to get our settings right for the rest of the weekend, to improve our performance. We will analyze our data carefully – mainly from FP2 – to be as well prepared as possible for qualifying."

More to follow…..

Practice 2 Results