Valtteri Bottas Spins In Pit Lane

With his team off the pace and languishing behind Max Verstappen, things went from bad to worse for Valtteri Bottas, who was left red-faced after spinning in the pit lane in FP2.

Lewis Hamilton finished the first session of the day third quickest with Bottas just behind in P4.

Lewis Hamilton Has Fastest Lap Time Deleted

Lewis Hamilton took P4 in the second session, after having the quickest time of the session deleted for a track limit violation.

‘Overall, a work in progress – it’s been a beautiful day, a few drops of rain at the start of the second session but the track is awesome. We’re a little bit down, particularly over a single lap, but generally the car felt relatively solid. I’m happy with where we’ve got the car to, I’ve been working hard all week trying to figure out where I want the car and I hope the hard work starts paying off soon. Red Bull are throwing some good punches at the moment so we’ve just got to have our guard up and make sure we’re ready for the return,’ said Hamilton.

Messy Day For Valtteri Bottas

Valtteri Bottas finished the second session in P12 after encountering traffic on his fastest lap – and his pit lane spin – and focused primarily on long runs on the soft and hard tyres.

‘FP1 felt overall a bit better but in FP2, we had just one run with lower fuel and that was a little messy so the lap time on the board was nothing amazing. But the focus for today was on the long runs, trying to find the long run performance – we prioritised that well today and hopefully that will pay off on Sunday. Lewis and I were running quite different set-ups so we have lots to analyse tonight to find the best bits to take into qualifying and the race,’ added Bottas.