Sebastian Vettel, Ferrari, Silverstone, 2018

Vettel heads second practice as Verstappen crashes

2018 British Grand Prix second practice

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Sebastian Vettel put Ferrari ahead in the second practice session at Silverstone but he wasn’t able to improve on the best time Lewis Hamilton set in the morning.

As track temperatures rose to over 50C the Mercedes drivers were unable to replicate their times from the cooler morning session. Vettel produced a best time of 1’27.552 on the soft tyres which put him within a tenth of a second of Hamilton’s first practice benchmark.

On the hot track drivers found the tyres gave their best on the first flying lap. Having lost time on his first run, Kimi Raikkonen ended up almost half a second off his team mate with his subsequent lap, and was separated from his team mate by the two Mercedes. He also had a near-miss when a Williams was waved out of the pits in front of him.

Romain Grosjean damaged his chassis when he crashed in first practice, which meant he was unable to take part in the second session. And within a few minutes of the session beginning another driver was ruled out.

Max Verstappen was on his first flying lap, running the hard tyres, when his Red Bull snapped sideways at the exist of Luffield. He hit the barrier nose-first, which spun the back of the car into the barrier, causing further damage. The session was red-flagged while his car was recovered.

That left Daniel Ricciardo as the sole Red Bull in the session, and he ended up over eight-tenths of a second down on Vettel.

Fernando Alonso was next-quickest, bringing some encouragement to McLaren following their unpromising start to first practice. Nico Hulkenberg put his Renault in seventh ahead of the two Force Indias and Charles Leclerc’s Sauber.

Pos.No.DriverCarBest lapGapLaps
15Sebastian VettelFerrari1’27.55235
244Lewis HamiltonMercedes1’27.7390.18732
377Valtteri BottasMercedes1’27.9090.35729
47Kimi RaikkonenFerrari1’28.0450.49334
53Daniel RicciardoRed Bull-TAG Heuer1’28.4080.85631
614Fernando AlonsoMcLaren-Renault1’29.3061.75431
727Nico HulkenbergRenault1’29.3541.80235
831Esteban OconForce India-Mercedes1’29.4671.91533
911Sergio PerezForce India-Mercedes1’29.5221.97032
1016Charles LeclercSauber-Ferrari1’29.5572.00530
1155Carlos Sainz JnrRenault1’29.5632.01136
1220Kevin MagnussenHaas-Ferrari1’29.6172.06533
1310Pierre GaslyToro Rosso-Honda1’29.8312.27916
149Marcus EricssonSauber-Ferrari1’30.0462.49432
1518Lance StrollWilliams-Mercedes1’30.0692.51734
1635Sergey SirotkinWilliams-Mercedes1’30.1032.55136
172Stoffel VandoorneMcLaren-Renault1’30.1212.56931
1828Brendon HartleyToro Rosso-Honda1’30.4042.85235

Second practice visual gaps

Sebastian Vettel – 1’27.552

+0.187 Lewis Hamilton – 1’27.739

+0.357 Valtteri Bottas – 1’27.909

+0.493 Kimi Raikkonen – 1’28.045

+0.856 Daniel Ricciardo – 1’28.408

+1.802 Nico Hulkenberg – 1’29.354

+1.915 Esteban Ocon – 1’29.467

+1.970 Sergio Perez – 1’29.522

+2.005 Charles Leclerc – 1’29.557

+2.011 Carlos Sainz Jnr – 1’29.563

+2.065 Kevin Magnussen – 1’29.617

+2.279 Pierre Gasly – 1’29.831

+2.494 Marcus Ericsson – 1’30.046

+2.517 Lance Stroll – 1’30.069

+2.551 Sergey Sirotkin – 1’30.103

+2.569 Stoffel Vandoorne – 1’30.121

+2.852 Brendon Hartley – 1’30.404

Drivers more then ten seconds off the pace omitted.

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2018 British Grand Prix

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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42 comments on “Vettel heads second practice as Verstappen crashes”

  1. So the two best drivers of last weekend begin the next one by crashing. Lovely.

    1. Thankfully for Max this was not in FP3.

    2. Ves said he loses a second on the straight compared to Ferrari and Mercedes. So pushing the car to the limit on the hardest tires possible (to find out what time differences this makes) and going for a one stop strategy is the only option. They knew the risk so they let him do this with gearbox normally used for training. It is soooo simple.

  2. Verstappen crashed again, uh?!? Ahahahahaaaaaaaaa!

    1. Somebody must start counting his crashes, I think we have a world beater talent here, probably the youngest too!

      1. Good thing he also knows how to win races.

        1. Yeah, by bumping others wide/off-track! He obviously won’t be a great champ, way too many crashes and contacts with other drivers. Few exceptional performances over the years can’t make up for all this “wrongdoing” he keeps collecting every race.

        2. He does know how to win races and he is great to watch when he’s on it, but this has got to stop. Being erratic for a few weeks, then totally on it for a few weeks and then crash again simply isn’t good enough. If he want’s to be a champion, he needs to stop crashing and be on top of it mentally, every single weekend.

          1. In MotoGP, Marquez won a few championships driving far more risky than Verstappen ;)
            Just for your perspective…

        1. Ahahahaaa! He obviously wins this trophy… Deserved!

          1. Your hate is getting ludicrous and not only yours.

    2. Pitchforks out!! There you go mate let it all out

  3. Crashtappen (as well as Crashjean) strikes again.

  4. Adam (@rocketpanda)
    6th July 2018, 15:50

    The split between Ferrari/Mercedes/Red Bull to everyone else is pretty shocking here.

    1. 14 cars within 1.1 second (1.2%), never been as close in the middle, but the gap between 5 and 6 is 0.9s (1%)

  5. The gap from Ricciardo to Hulk is immense. It shows how important it is to have a good car all around to perform at Silverstone.

    I feel however the tyres will be again a huge talking point this weekend

    1. @keithcollantine Unless my eyes deceive me; Alonso is missing from the visual gap. Still though, there’s almost a second between Ricciardo and Hulkenberg.

      1. Archit (@architjain07)
        6th July 2018, 17:02

        @tim-m– Alonso is indeed missing! It is Alonso who is best of the rest not Hulkenberg!

  6. Huh, didn’t know Alonso had quit F1 already (this could look silly in a few minutes).

    1. It still currently makes sense!

  7. I don’t get the gearbox rule. Horner said Max did not have his race gearbox in the car when he crashed. So this implies the mechanics are changing gearboxes to preserve the race one. So what is the purpose of this gearbox rule? It does not “save budget”. Seems to needlessly cause team drama. Why not just drop it and allow the teams to do as they will. With the gear box ratios being fixed for the season, I think there is no reason to have this gearbox rule anymore..

    1. He was using an old one, as far as I understand, so that doesn’t affect the total amount of gearboxes used I guess.

  8. Does anyone have the average longrun laptimes and the tires they were running?

  9. i would like to know about long runs, please, im not interested in quali fake times, we all know is going to go down a second or more in the q3

    1. @jeffreyj according to another website, both mercedes and ferrari were frequently driving in the 1:33s while redbull with ricciardo rarely did, he mostly was in the 1:34s

      1. @j3d89 Tnx. Does that site say if they were all on the same tires for those runs?

        1. @jeffreyj Sorry nope,but I suspect it was on the medium tires, yellow, I didn’t see the top drivers using the softest

          1. sorry i mixed the colors haha they did use the softest… i saw a blue or purple color and thought it was the ultras.. but that was the hard tire (ice blue).. but yea…race simulation was on medium(white color not yellow like i said) and the fastest laps on soft(the yellow)

  10. Pirelli are ridiculous. After Merc were out done in chassis and engine by Ferrari they protested everything on the Ferrari and had Pirelli make them special tyres. It worked in 2 of the 3 races the Merc special tyres were used but if FP2 is in any way representative of what happens in the rest of the weekend then Pirelli need to sort something out, maybe another compound over night that everyone has to use that suits Merc even more. Merc are trying so hard their cars broke last race. Come on Pirelli do your bit.

    1. Yes, it’s so likely that this + france + spain results will make mercedes or hamilton win the championship and that either of them wouldn’t have happened with regular tyres, I don’t really like this changing the tyres to favour one team, and I’m not really a hamilton hater, I just hate changes like this to favour not a random team, but the one that has been dominating the past years and even in 2017 brought the overall best car.

      Imagine FIA helping ferrari win the 2005 title instead of changing tyre rules to damage them like they did.

  11. A whole second between the top 6th and the rest. Depressing

    1. We could focus on World Cup quarter finals not qualification tomorrow then.

  12. Is Alonso really that good? Or Vandoorne is actually no better than Ericsson?

    1. @ruliemaulana Only Mclaren can know since they constantly give all the new bits to Alonso so there is a car deficit half of the races. Since they favor Alonso so much, it is difficult to judge to be honest.

      1. It’s McLaren you are talking about, unless they got lucky, I highly doubt that their new bits bring that much difference, or they wouldn’t be in such situation in the first place.

        McLaren didn’t know what they are doing even when they were winning, Whitmarsch admitted they don’t know why the 2012 MP4-27 was so fast, they had the wind tunnel discrepancy even then, only the MP4-27 was better than the wind tunnel model, which leads Whitmarsch claimed that the car “over delivered”, but he even went on to claim that whoever will build a fast car, it’s not because of their good decisions and choices, but because they luck into a zone. So now I guess they never bothered to solve the isseue. Just look how Red Bull lucked into the zone for almost 10 years now, it’s insanity that Whitmarsch ever thought he should come back to McLaren.

        1. What McLaren does know is that after testing the preferential driver gets his pick on the parts to be used on his car, and even the spare parts. Stoffel can use the leftovers.
          Fridays testing is divided between the drivers: Alo does setup work for this race, Vandoorne does validation of on track performance vs simulation… Alo will claim he beats Vandoorne in Qualifying in every race, but omit the 13 reasons why :p
          Alonso claims not to be the boss at Mclaren, but fails to tell that the boss does what Alo says :)

  13. Normally Ferrari tend to sandbag more than Mercedes & despite this Vettel goes quickest…. Looks like ferrari maybe the team to beat this weekend.

    & about Verstappen…. its only practice… infact practice is about finding the limit of the car which Max is doing. He’ll be back on it tomorrow

  14. Alonso is missing from the visual gaps graph!

  15. “De Crasheris”: He earned that nickname, so I’m fine with that.
    “Crashtor”: He earned that nickname, so I’m fine with that too.
    “Crashstappen”: Well…

Comments are closed.