Bottas goes fastest again, then hits Grosjean

Valtteri Bottas remained on top in the second practice session for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, but was involved in a bizarre incident with Romain Grosjean later in the decision.

The Mercedes driver moved to overtake the Haas at turn 11, but came from a fair distance back, and Grosjean didn’t see him as he turned in. The pair made contact, leaving a bemused Grosjean with damage. The session had to be red-flagged while the debris was cleared. It was later restarted, but at the end Bottas was advised the team had identified a leak on his car.

Mercedes ended the session first and second, but Lewis Hamilton was around three-tenths of a second off his team mate after encountering an upshift problem early in his run.

He was just seven-hundredths of a second faster than Charles Leclerc, who survived a brush with the same turn 19 barrier Sebastian Vettel hit at the end of first practice. Leclerc had to put another set of soft tyres on to complete his run to third-fastest, while Vettel ended up with a tenth of him.

The Red Bull pair continued a symmetrical top six. Max Verstappen slipped from second in first practice to fifth, over half a second off Bottas’s pace, with a similar gap back to Alexander Albon in sixth.

Before being hit by Bottas, Grosjean set the seventh-best time for Haas, but just hundredths of a second separated him from Sergio Perez, and Daniil Kvyat in ninth. The second Toro Rosso of Pierre Gasly completed the top 10.

The bottom half of the times also had a symmetrical look, with Renault ahead of Alfa Romeo and, last as usual, the Williams pair. The quickest FW42 was over a second off the next-best car.

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Pos.	No.	Driver	Car	Best lap	Gap	Laps
1	77	Valtteri Bottas	Mercedes	1’36.256		29
2	44	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1’36.566	0.310	32
3	16	Charles Leclerc	Ferrari	1’36.642	0.386	30
4	5	Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	1’36.691	0.435	28
5	33	Max Verstappen	Red Bull-Honda	1’36.807	0.551	30
6	23	Alexander Albon	Red Bull-Honda	1’37.288	1.032	30
7	8	Romain Grosjean	Haas-Ferrari	1’37.601	1.345	17
8	11	Sergio Perez	Racing Point-Mercedes	1’37.637	1.381	31
9	26	Daniil Kvyat	Toro Rosso-Honda	1’37.651	1.395	34
10	10	Pierre Gasly	Toro Rosso-Honda	1’37.770	1.514	36
11	55	Carlos Sainz Jnr	McLaren-Renault	1’37.834	1.578	32
12	4	Lando Norris	McLaren-Renault	1’37.918	1.662	32
13	18	Lance Stroll	Racing Point-Mercedes	1’37.985	1.729	32
14	20	Kevin Magnussen	Haas-Ferrari	1’38.080	1.824	31
15	27	Nico Hulkenberg	Renault	1’38.122	1.866	29
16	3	Daniel Ricciardo	Renault	1’38.400	2.144	25
17	7	Kimi Raikkonen	Alfa Romeo-Ferrari	1’38.415	2.159	30
18	99	Antonio Giovinazzi	Alfa Romeo-Ferrari	1’38.464	2.208	32
19	63	George Russell	Williams-Mercedes	1’39.512	3.256	31
20	88	Robert Kubica	Williams-Mercedes	1’40.455	4.199	31

Second practice visual gaps

Drivers more then ten seconds off the pace omitted.

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