F1 GP Spain, free practice 2: Hamilton confirms Mercedes at the top, but Ferrari is close

Best time for Lewis Hamilton in the second free practice session held in Barcelona, ​​the fifth round of the 2018 Formula One World Championship. The Englishman confirmed the excellent pace shown this morning by his Scuderia teammate, closing his day's work with a time of 1'18"259, a tenth faster than Daniel Ricciardo. An extremely interesting time, but one that doesn't give any guarantees: the standard bearers of the Brackey team, in fact, suffered the transition to the super soft compounds, failing to improve significantly compared to the soft ones, especially in terms of pace. The engineers will try to put the pieces together this evening, fixing those few details that didn't work in today's two sessions.

Third position for Max Verstappen, followed by Sebastian Vettel, Valtteri Bottas and Kimi Raikkonen. Red Bull's excellent day should be underlined, especially with regards to the flying lap, with the Austrian Scuderia's standard-bearers capable of staying in the wake of Mercedes. Regarding the race pace, however, the doubt remains regarding the quantity of fuel. The opposite is true, however, for Sebastian Vettel: the German suffered on the flying lap, but showed off an extremely positive race pace. The standard bearer of the Red, at the moment, seems to be the only one capable of keeping up with the Mercedes of Hamilton and Bottas, especially with soft tyres. Positive session also for Bottas, even if the Finn ran with medium compounds, still drawing very interesting data.

The last of the top drivers was the Finnish driver from Ferrari, stopped mid-session by a mechanical problem with the power unit. A nuisance that will need to be properly analyzed over the next few hours. It should be noted that Kimi did not run the race simulation, a factor that did not allow Ferrari to carry out tests on the medium compounds. Followed by Romain Grosjean, Kevin Magnussen and Stoffel Vandoorne. Sergio Perez closes the top ten.

Williams' increasingly difficult situation should be highlighted: Stroll and Sirotkin, in fact, ended this first day in the penultimate and last position, struggling quite a bit in all race conditions.

Furthermore, Kubica managed to do better than the starters in the morning, putting the Grove team in an absolutely uncomfortable situation. See you tomorrow, 12.00, for the last free practices before the qualifying session on the Montmelò track.

FP2 CLASSIFICATION@LewisHamilton on top, with @redbullracing breathing down his neck

This could get interesting 👀#F1 🇪🇸 #SpanishGP pic.twitter.com/y0TkWzFVnq

- Formula 1 (@ F1) 11 May 2018