Lando Norris topped the second practice session for the 2024 British Grand Prix, as teammate Oscar Piastri was second fastest, confirming McLaren's strong form.
While FP1 did not offer a clear pecking order, the picture was clearer after FP2, although not fully so, as Max Verstappen was seventh fastest.
While McLaren were on top with Norris and Piastri, Verstappen set his best time on Softs almost 15 minutes before the others, and with the track evolving, the times improved.
Verstappen did a mistake on his second Soft run, and then returned to the pits and started his long runs on high fuel loads.
But Sergio Perez was third fastest behind the McLarens, over four tenths slower than Norris, which means ,given the performance gap between the Mexican and Verstappen, the latter is logically quite close to Norris.
Nico Hulkenberg was fourth in the Haas, impressive in the upgraded Haas, while the Ferraris did not seem spectacular, and were running back to back comparisons with Charles Leclerc running the upgraded SF-24, Carlos Sainz running the pre-upgrade spec.
Mercedes were slower than the Ferrari, Lewis Hamilton reporting to his team that he was "just slow" despite the track being fine. The seven-time Formula 1 Champion was sixth fastest behind Leclerc in fifth.
Rain hit the session in the final few minutes, but the intensity was not high and did not affect the session.
Buildup towards FP2
Norris was the fastest driver in FP1, but we did not get to see the real pace of Verstappen in the Red Bull or any of the Mercedes and the Ferraris as they stuck to the harder rubber.
But the some deeper look into the times and the gaps showed that Red Bull and McLaren will again be battling out at the top, while Mercedes is a tad behind, as Ferrari still need to improve.
With young drivers taking part in the first session, the regulars will be back in their seats for FP2: Pierre Gasly (Jack Doohan), Kevin Magnussen (Oliver Bearman), Sergio Perez (Isack Hadjar), and Logan Sargeant (Franco Colapinto).
Gasly, by the way, will start the race on Sunday from last after Alpine decided to give him a new power unit, one more than his allowed allocation.
FP2 Session Highlights
The dry conditions continued for FP2. Track temperatures at 28 degrees Celsius while air temperature was at 17 degrees.
Drivers did waste any time and were lining up in the pitlane waiting for the green light and soon started their second hour of practice.
The Medium tyre was the predominant compound at the start of the session, with only three drivers, Hulkenberg, Lance Stroll and Valtteri Bottas on the Hards.
Ten minutes into the session, Leclerc had a momentarily off moment at Turn 16, while Gasly has a moment on the kerbs at Turn 9.
The Ferrari driver complains that he is struggling in the high speed corners, his engineer responding: "It's really on the edge."
15 minutes into the session, the Softs started appearing with Verstappen the first driver to set a time with them and improves his time by almost sixth tenths, and goes even faster by over eight tenths from Leclerc in second.
20 minutes into the session, George Russell had sparky moment at copse after running hard over the kerbs.
The gap to Verstappen was soon reduced as Russell closed in to almost three tenths after improving on Mediums and 25 minutes into the session, Fernando Alonso goes second fastest, 0.153s behind Verstappen.
Then more drivers started using the Softs as the times started being shuffled with Verstappen remaining on top, that is until Leclerc took the top spot from the Dutchman then lost it to Piastri, while Hulkenberg went second fastest - at half time.
Soon Norris goes fastest, over three tenths faster than his teammate, as the times continued to drop, the track continuously evolving.
Verstappen on his second run on Soft, posted a personal best sector one, but then loses control at Becketts.
Soon engineers started informing their drivers that rain is expected to hit the track in the final minutes of the session.
Verstappen did not manage to set another hot lap on Softs, and set out on high fuel runs, at a point when he was seventh on the time screens.
After that all the other drivers fueled up their cars and set out on their long runs and Norris was informed that the expected rain will be heavy, and asked him to take no risks.
The rain finally arrived towards the end, and drivers returned to the pits, while some drivers slapped on Intermediate tyres to do practice starts in the damp conditions.
How they finished
Norris went fastest with a lap time of 1:29.549, 0.331s clear of his teammate in second and 0.434s faster than Perez in third.
Hulkenberg was a strong fourth, a good sign for Haas' upgraded VF24, the German 0.441s off the pace and 0.160s ahead of Leclerc in fifth.
Hamilton was sixth fastest, 0.653s down from Norris' best time, and 0.031s ahead of Verstappen who was seventh fastest.
Sainz was eighth in the old spec Ferrari, seven tenths off the top and 0.025s ahead of Stroll in ninth, with Russell tenth.
After some strong runs in previous races, the Alpines were down in 14th and 15th with Gasly and Esteban Ocon respectively.
British GP FP2 Classification
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