Hamilton leads second practice as Verstappen closes in

Following a ten minute delay of action as circuit officials fixed a loose drain cover, the pitlane at Autódromo Internacional do Algarve roared with the sound of cars heading out for the second free practice session of the Formula 1 Heineken Grande Prémio De Portugal 2021.

In the opening ten minutes it was the leader of the first practice session Valtteri Bottas that was setting the pace, a time of 1:20.423, leading Carlos Sainz Jr., and Lewis Hamilton. The opening part of the session was largely uneventful other than Nikita Mazepin briefly heading off of the circuit as George Russell made a pass on the Brit.

Twenty minutes in to the session and Max Verstappen had managed to set a time good enough to move to the top of the timing screens with a lap of 1:20.322, pushing Bottas down to second place. It wouldn’t be long before the Finn would reclaim the top spot, improving his time to 1:20.181, only to be blitzed by his team-mate Lewis Hamilton with a time of 1:19.837.

At the halfway point of the session the top ten was led by Hamilton, Bottas and Sainz. The Alpine duo of Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon were fourth and fifth fastest. Verstappen was in sixth place ahead of Charles Leclerc, Daniel Ricciardo, Lance Stroll, and Sergio Pérez, who had a near miss with a Haas coming out of the pit lane.

As the clock counted down and headed in to the closing stages Mick Schumacher was reporting engine problems on his Haas, down in eighteenth place the German driver had slowed noticeably. The issue didn’t seem terminal, after speaking with engineers on the radio it wasn’t long before he was back up to speed.

Heading out on track on a fresh set of soft tyres, Verstappen pushed his pace, with a clear track ahead of him he managed to move up to second place, just 0.143 seconds behind the top time by Hamilton.

In the closing moments of the session, Tsunoda managed to avoid a potentially embarrassing incident as he was caught out by the wind at Turn 3, thankfully for the Japanese driver he managed to pull out of the corner, using the run off area to recover.

Pos	#	Driver	Nat.	Team	Time	Gap	Laps
1	44	Lewis Hamilton	GBR	Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team	1:19.837		33
2	33	Max Verstappen	NED	Red Bull Racing Honda	1:19.980	+0.143s	26
3	77	Valtteri Bottas	FIN	Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team	1:20.181	+0.344s	28
4	55	Carlos Sainz Jr.	ESP	Scuderia Ferrari Mission Winnow	1:20.197	+0.360s	33
5	14	Fernando Alonso	ESP	Alpine F1 Team	1:20.220	+0.383s	32
6	31	Esteban Ocon	FRA	Alpine F1 Team	1:20.235	+0.398s	31
7	16	Charles Leclerc	MON	Scuderia Ferrari Mission Winnow	1:20.360	+0.523s	33
8	3	Daniel Ricciardo	AUS	McLaren F1 Team	1:20.418	+0.581s	31
9	18	Lance Stroll	CAN	Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One Team	1:20.427	+0.590s	31
10	11	Sergio Pérez	MEX	Red Bull Racing Honda	1:20.516	+0.679s	28
11	10	Pierre Gasly	FRA	Scuderia AlphaTauri Honda	1:20.558	+0.721s	34
12	4	Lando Norris	GBR	McLaren F1 Team	1:20.757	+0.920s	28
13	63	George Russell	GBR	Williams Racing	1:20.976	+1.139s	32
14	22	Yuki Tsunoda	JAP	Scuderia AlphaTauri Honda	1:21.053	+1.216s	33
15	5	Sebastian Vettel	GER	Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One Team	1:21.074	+1.237s	32
16	7	Kimi Räikkönen	FIN	Alfa Romeo Racing Orlen	1:21.225	+1.388s	22
17	99	Antonio Giovinazzi	ITA	Alfa Romeo Racing Orlen	1:21.238	+1.401s	32
18	47	Mick Schumacher	GER	Uralkali Haas F1 Team	1:21.537	+1.700s	29
19	6	Nicholas Latifi	CAN	Williams Racing	1:21.855	+2.018s	31
20	9	Nikita Mazepin	RUS	Uralkali Haas F1 Team	1:22.638	+2.801s	28