The second free practice session of the Gran Premio di Emilia-Romagna was full of twists and turns, with Charles Leclerc once again leading the way, confirming his impressive morning pace.
The session began with Esteban Ocon as the first driver to leave the pit lane, on hard tyres for his first stint. He was closely followed by Nico Hülkenberg, the future Sauber driver. All the drivers on track, with the exception of Williams and Oscar Piastri, opted for medium or hard tyres from the start of the session.
Zhou soon reported difficulties in first gear, while Nico Hülkenberg had to return to the pits after his engineers detected a problem with his car. Several drivers also suffered spins.
Max Verstappen, who had experienced understeer and performance problems in the second sector during FP1, saw a marked improvement during this second session. For his part, Yuki Tsunoda continued to build on his good morning performance, finishing second behind Verstappen.
However, 15 minutes into the session, none of the Williams cars had emerged. The mechanics were working intensively on Alex Albon’s car in an attempt to resolve the persistent problems from FP1. A misunderstanding between Alonso and Hamilton also marked this period, with Hamilton impeding Alonso by driving at low speed in the middle of the track.
Pierre Gasly gave his Alpine team a scare with a harmless spin, before his team-mate identified a problem in fourth gear on the straight. Leclerc, leader of the first session, reported a power steering problem while still leading the timesheet, just 0.003 seconds ahead of his team-mate.
After 20 minutes of running, all the drivers returned to their garages to analyse the data and adjust their settings. George Russell was the first to return to the track, followed by Alex Albon 35 minutes before the end, his car now equipped with medium tyres. Logan Sargeant finally left the pit lane halfway through the session on hard tyres.
The first driver to switch to soft tyres was George Russell, who climbed to fourth place, still behind the Ferraris and Verstappen who had set their best times on medium tyres. Several drivers then opted for soft tyres, and Charles Leclerc improved his time to maintain top spot, closely followed by Oscar Piastri in his McLaren. Verstappen, meanwhile, failed to improve his time and ended up in fifth position.
The session was full of incidents right up to the end: Max Verstappen continued to encounter problems, this time with excess grip on his front tyres. The drivers’ strategies diverged, with Hamilton doing long runs on soft tyres while the McLarens worked on different compounds.
Yuki Tsunoda was cautioned for not following procedure at the start of the session, a matter to be followed up after the session. The Williams drivers made a short run on soft tyres, but this only placed them 18th and 20th.
With 10 minutes to go, all the drivers except Norris were working on long runs on soft tyres.
Luck was not on his side for Verstappen, who again ran into trouble, exiting the track in the gravel. Carlos Sainz also went off track, pushing his car to the limit.
Finally, an incident between Leclerc and Perez, with one impeding the other, will be examined by the stewards after the session.
Charles Leclerc thus brilliantly confirmed his domination of free practice, heralding a fierce battle for tomorrow’s qualifying sessions.