Lewis Hamilton continued his strong performance into Free Practice 2 for the Brazilian Grand Prix, after topping the time sheets for his Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One Team.
The Briton set a time of 1:12.271 to finish the session ahead of team-mate Nico Rosberg by only 0.030 seconds, and this time meant Hamilton has topped both time sheets on the opening day of practice. Behind the Mercedes duo was the first Williams Martini Racing of Valtteri Bottas with a time of 1:12.761, and he finished the session ahead of team-mate Felipe Massa.
Earlier in the session, Bottas did hold the top spot with Massa behind him by only 0.028 seconds. The duo were unable to hold this position, as the Mercedes duo bounced back up to the top spots. Another driver to hold the top spot was the Red Bull Racing of Daniel Ricciardo but later finished the session in fifth, ahead of his team-mate Max Verstappen by one tenth of a second.
Sebastian Vettel finished the session in seventh for Scuderia Ferrari, with a time of 1:13.002. This saw him finish ahead of his team-mate Kimi Raikkonen by 0.045 seconds, while Nico Hulkenberg finished in ninth for Sahara Force India F1 Team with a time of 1:13.299, ahead of the first McLaren Honda Formula 1 Team of Jenson Button. Button had a difficult session, after experiencing some problems on his MP4- 31, with his session ending after his exhaust overheated, and he was unable to complete long runs for the team.
Fernando Alonso finished the session behind his team-mate in eleventh. This was a good finish for him after he only completed 18 laps before he retired from the session. He also experienced problems with the car, which later responded in his race engineer telling him to stop the car, and it was later confirmed it was an ERS problem.
This brought out the Virtual Safety car, so the marshals could safely push the his car behind the barrier. This marked the session over for Alonso, while the team looked at the car. Instead of reporting back to the garage, Alonso stayed out to watch the track action from his rivals as well as having fun on one of the track cameras.
Daniil Kvyat finished a relatively quiet session for Scuderia Toro Rosso, after experiencing problems in the first practice session. He finished ahead of team-mate Carlos Sainz Jr with a time of 1:13.689. Sergio Perez finished the session in fourteenth a disappointing result for the Mexican, after team-mate Hulkenberg finished within the top ten.
After suffering a power issue within the first session, problems seemed to continue into Free Practice 2 for Romain Grosjean. He reported to his engineers that, “Something is wrong, very strange at turn 1”. He finished the session in fifteenth with a time of 1:14.074. Behind Grosjean was Kevin Magnussen who completed his first session of this weekend, after passing the wheel of his Renault Sport Formula 1 Team RS16 over to test driver Sergey Sirotkin in Free Practice 1.
Felipe Nasr finished the session in seventeenth for Sauber F1 Team, ahead of main rival Esteban Ocon for Manor Racing MRT. Jolyon Palmer finished behind Ocon for Renault with a time of 1:14.436 in nineteenth. Esteban Gutierrez returned to his VF-16 for his first session, after handing over the wheel to Charles Leclerc in FP1. He finished with a time of 1:14.558 that saw him finish ahead of Marcus Ericsson.
The session didn’t come without it’s problems for Ericsson, as he ended his session after the car got too hot. With flat spotting his last tyres for the session he was unable to return to the track. Pascal Wehrlein finished in twenty-second for Manor.
Raikkonen is under investigation from the stewards after he and Sainz went wheel-to-wheel early in the session, with Raikkonen then cutting across Sainz before diving for the pits.
Brazilian Grand Prix Free Practice 2
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