Well it can be said that was a bit dramatic wasn’t it. Friday’s afternoon running was disrupted by not one but two red flags in the second half of the session. Firstly for Pierre Gasly’s Alpha Tauri coming to a fiery stop on track. And secondly for a bizarre incident between Max Verstappen and Lance Stroll that sent the Racing Point into the gravel. This incident will no doubt be the talking point of today.
Max let Lance go on his outlap seemingly in the hope of getting a toe on the main straight for another fast lap. However unbeknownst to him, Lance was doing a second fast lap and they both entered the first corner side by side. Lance turned in and the contact was inevitable. The incident is under investigation by the stewards.
Due to these disruptions the order is a bit jumbled. The first half an hour of the session wasn’t massively relevant as Pirelli were testing 2021 prototype tyres. Valtteri Bottas ended the session on top once again on a 1.17.940, 5 tenths ahead of Max Verstappen who ended the session second fastest despite the incident. In third was Lando Norris who set a solid lap in the dying seconds of the session ahead of Charles Leclerc in fourth. Like his team-mate, Carlos Sainz put in a late lap to go fifth fastest, with Sebastian Vettel in sixth, ending a good day for Ferrari.
Despite stopping out on track, Pierre Gasly had set a good laptime beforehand, ending the session seventh. Lewis Hamilton had both his qualifying runs disrupted by the red flags and ended the session in a lowly eighth. Esteban Ocon ended the session ninth with Alexander Albon rounding out the top 10. It was a good session for Williams, with George Russell ending eleventh and Nicholas Latifi fourteenth.
Like the morning session there were a fair few mistakes out there, and with the red flags causing a lack of race running it can be said every team is on the back foot going into tomorrow and Sunday, especially as opportunities for race runs are now limited.
Here is the classification of FP2 from Portimao;
RaceWeek 