2022 Bahrain GP: Max Verstappen fastest in FP2 ahead of Ferrari duo

Red Bull’s Max Verstappen set the fastest time in the second practice session of the 2022 Bahrain Grand Prix weekend, finishing ahead of Ferrari duo Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz.

Halfway into the hour, the reigning champion fitted soft tyres to go fastest with a time of 1m 31.936s before Ferrari’s Leclerc managed a fastest lap that was just 0.087s off the pace. Carlos Sainz jumped to third later on but was half a second away from the top spot.

Mercedes’ George Russell was therefore demoted to fourth (narrowly off Sainz) while Fernando Alonso took P5 as the last driver within a second of Verstappen’s pace.

Alfa Romeo’s Valtteri Bottas managed to take sixth, the team having fixed his engine after the Finn was forced to sit out much of FP1 with a power unit issue.

Red Bull’s Sergio Perez was 1.022s off his teammate, the Mexican finishing seventh ahead of Haas’s Mick Schumacher in P8.

Lewis Hamilton struggled with porpoising and then complained of a front brake issue midway through the session, finishing ninth and splitting the Haas drivers, as Kevin Magnussen rounded out the top 10 to cap off a good day for the Americans.

McLaren had an anonymous showing, beginning FP2 on hard tyres (their rivals having begun on mediums) before switching to soft tyres. Lando Norris finished 11th and his teammate Daniel Ricciardo was 18th.

Alpine’s Esteban Ocon was 12th, half a second splitting him and fifth-place teammate Alonso. AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly finished first in FP1 but complained of a lack of grip in the cooler evening conditions, finishing 13th ahead of teammate Yuki Tsunoda – who is under investigation for both impeding a Leclerc lap, and an incident involving Lance Stroll at the tail-end of the session.

Zhou Guanyu finished 15th, the Alfa Romeo rookie placing ahead of the Aston Martins. Much like the McLaren drivers, neither of the Aston drivers showed their hands in FP2, with Stroll 16th and stand-in teammate Nico Hulkenberg 17th – the German having spent a minimal amount of time on soft tyres to focus on medium-tyred long runs.

Ricciardo, 18th, had his session cut short with 10 minutes remaining due to a water leak – leaving Williams’ Nicholas Latifi (19th) and Alex Albon (20th) to round out the timesheets.

Next up is FP3, which begins at 1500 local time on Saturday, before qualifying starts at 1800 to set the grid for the Bahrain Grandprix.