George Russell leads ominous Mercedes 1-2 in F1 Azerbaijan FP2

Mercedes driver George Russell ended Thursday’s practice running at F1’s Azerbaijan GP on top after comfortably leading FP2.

Russell held off Mercedes team-mate and championship leader Kimi Antonelli as the Silver Arrows enjoyed a comfortable cushion through the fast streets in Baku.

With the race taking place on Saturday to observe a national holiday on Sunday, the on-track proceedings exceptionally got underway on Thursday. On the high-speed 6km street circuit stretching along the Caspian Sea, the red flag came out after 10 minutes for a crash by Racing Bulls rookie Arvid Lindblad, who tagged the protruding Turn 9 wall at the narrow castle section, part of the UNESCO heritage site the circuit loops around.

The session resumed at the halfway mark following some debris cleaning, but in Oliver Bearman’s case the second half of FP2 was short-lived, with the Haas driver reporting a power unit failure coming out of the pits.

It took until a paddock-wide move towards soft-tyre one-lap runs for drivers to challenge Verstappen’s early medium-tyre benchmark. Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc first dipped below the Dutchman’s time after 25 minutes with a 1m44.473s, before FP1 leader Russell convincingly took over command with a 1m43.759s, seven tenths quicker than the Ferrari.

But Mercedes had more in that tank still, looking ominously quick on the power-hungry Baku city circuit. Russell took another generous bite of his best time to set a 1m43.347s lap, with Antonelli slotting into second five tenths behind after sitting out a chunk of first practice with a mechanical issue.

Verstappen moved past Leclerc into third, yet still over eighth-tenths in arrears of Russell as Mercedes ended the day with a one-two result. Hamilton was two tenths behind Leclerc in fifth, followed by the first McLaren car in the hands of Lando Norris.

McLaren, which is introducing a sizeable upgrade package aimed at improving low-speed performance, was still optimising its updated car as Norris followed 1.5s behind without setting a representative qualifying simulation. Pierre Gasly split the two McLarens in seventh ahead of Oscar Piastri, with Isack Hadjar and Esteban Ocon rounding out the top 10.

Alongside the on-track issues for Lindblad and Bearman, there was more trouble for Aston Martin and Honda as Fernando Alonso only managed nine laps before being consigned to the garage with a suspected oil leak in the power unit.

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– The Motorsport.com Team

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