Leclerc pips Norris by 0.015s to top spot in muddled second practice

After rain impacted the morning session, teams had a lot of work to do in terms of gathering data ahead of the rest of the weekend.

It was a difficult session to read with Max Verstappen only 11th fastest, 0.5s off Leclerc’s fastest lap time.

Norris had initially risen to the top of the timesheets but was beaten by Leclerc with 25 minutes on the clock.

Pierre Gasly completed the top three in the Alpine, just 0.2s shy of Leclerc.

Yuki Tsunoda was fourth overall, narrowly ahead of Esteban Ocon and Nico Hulkenberg.

The top six all completed their fastest lap on the softs, while Valtteri Bottas was seventh on the medium.

Teams will be forced to run the hard tyre in Q1 and the medium tyre in Q2 as part of the experimental qualifying format trial for this weekend, so it was no surprise to see a range of tyres in play.

Fernando Alonso, Zhou Gyanyu and Carlos Sainz completed the top 10.

It was a quiet session for the runaway championship leader, Verstappen, finishing the session outside of the top 10, teammate Sergio Perez didn’t fare much better, ending FP2 1.2s down in 18th.

Daniel Ricciardo was 14th on his F1 comeback, 0.4s off.

Similarly, Mercedes would have been concerned by their lack of pace.

Eight-time Hungarian GP winner Lewis Hamilton was 16th, while George Russell was slowest of the 20 drivers.