F1 Spanish GP: Hamilton fastest in FP2 over Sainz, Norris
Lewis Hamilton posted the fastest time in FP2 ahead of Formula 1's Spanish Grand Prix as the Mercedes driver beat Carlos Sainz by a scant 0.022 seconds.
The seven-time F1 champion vaulted to the top of the order amid the mid-session soft tyre running to displace home favourite Sainz, who had kicked off the running on the C3 tyres - the softest compound for this weekend.
George Russell had led the way after the early runs on medium tyres, having nudged ahead of FP1 headliner Lando Norris' 1m14.197s to claim a 1m14.089s as the benchmark for the later soft-tyre runs.
Sainz then produced the first flying lap on the red-walled tyres among the front-runners, logging a 1m13.286s, which was briefly challenged by Norris, but the McLaren driver only managed to put his car 0.033s behind his ex-team-mate.
Max Verstappen set the best first and third sectors on his first tilt at a qualifying-adjacent tour, but lost 0.3s in the middle sector to Sainz to ultimately fall short of the two cars ahead.
Hamilton then fired his Mercedes to the top, logging a 1m13.264s thanks to a strong final sector, to carry him just two hundredths clear of Sainz's earlier effort.
The attention switched to race runs shortly after, effectively locking in the timing board as the teams and drivers sought to assess their cars in race trim.
Sainz and Norris thus completed the top three, all within a 0.055s bracket of Hamilton's best effort. In the meantime, Verstappen had been sitting in fourth towards the end of the quicker runs - but was gazumped by a surprise effort from Pierre Gasly who found a time good enough to split him from the leading trio.
Charles Leclerc was sixth fastest, but largely sat out the longer runs as Ferrari decided instead to tinker with his SF-24's suspension settings to extract more pace from his machinery.
Oscar Piastri was seventh ahead of Russell, who was under half a second shy of his team-mate's top-line effort having struggled with an apparent lack of stopping power on board his Mercedes.
Esteban Ocon gave Alpine reason to be buoyant as he claimed the ninth fastest time, ensuring both A524s figured in the top half of the timesheets, while Valtteri Bottas completed the top 10 over the two Haas cars.
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