Can anyone keep Mercedes from an Abu Dhabi double six-in-a-row?

The Mercedes pair led the way in practice but Valtteri Bottas enjoyed a comfortable gap over team mate Lewis Hamilton. What was going on here?

On one hand, Bottas has the luxury of a fresh engine, good for seven races, which he can expend in a single event. That is weighed against the disadvantage of having to start from the back of the grid on Sunday. Does he have everything dialled up to 11 and is seeking an aggressive set-up for the race which will help him overtake?

Is that what that bizarre lunge at Romain Grosjean during second practice was all about? Bottas had lunged past Pierre Gasly from a long was back at the same corner a few laps earlier – perhaps these were a few practice passes.

Hamilton, however, spend the session experimenting with his car, his thoughts already on 2020. “I’m definitely hoping to unlock something,” he said after practice. “[I’ve been] utilising a couple of different tools that I haven’t really touched during the year just because it never really worked before. I’m trying to explore and see whether or not I can get them to work.”

“It’s really just a pre-emptive thought process for next year,” he explained. “Even though next year’s car is going to be different there still might be things I might be able to apply, but I’m having to take it all with a pinch of salt at the moment.”

So far there’s been little to suggest Mercedes won’t extend their run of five pole positions in a row and five wins in a row this weekend. Where might a challenger come from?

Yas Marina has never been a Ferrari circuit. On the long straights of sectors one and two, the SF-90s looked strong today. But they suffer in the final sector where the life has gone from the tyres.

“We’re pretty much fighting the same things as the last couple of races,” said Sebastian Vettel. “These medium, low-speed type of corners, we are lacking speed compared to the others.

“Sector three is where it really hurts us. We struggle with the tyres getting hot and the car being quite difficult to drive.”

Vettel expects the team can find some more time from its set-up, but Charles Leclerc is concerned by the threat from Red Bull, who were barely any slower than then in second practice. Leclerc at least has an engine which is almost as fresh as Bottas’s for the next two days.

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Ferrari’s single-lap potency can’t be underestimated, however. And with Bottas doomed to start at the back, the silver cars definitely won’t have the front row to themselves.

Bottas aside, and perhaps Alexander Albon, expect the front-runners to qualify on the medium tyre, to avoid running the soft, which is not holding up well. That’s bad news for the fastest midfield teams, for with a one second gap between the soft and the medium compounds, they won’t be able to do the same, and will therefore have to start the race on used soft tyres.

Being able to start on new rubber “is an advantage here as we’ve seen” said Carlos Sainz Jnr. Last year he qualified 11th – ‘new tyre pole’ – start on a fresh sets of ‘mediums’ (‘ultra-softs’ in 2018 parlance), and ran a very long first stint before switching to the hardest tyres. That brought him home ‘best of the rest’ in sixth place.

The McLaren were hanging around just outside the top 10 in second practice. But the MCL34’s superiority in qualifying relative to their rivals may come back to haunt them, delivering the cars into Q3 and paying the price by starting on old rubber. It can’t be said how often enough how wretchedly unfair F1’s ‘Q2 tyre rule’ is.

“It’s not going to be easy,” said Sainz. “We need to make sure we put together everything, you know and even if you’re getting to Q3 and you’re seventh, it is not guaranteed that you’re going to finish in the points because of the tyre disadvantage, which is a pain.”

[icon2019autocoursempu]Behind the usual top three, the midfield is blink-and-miss-it close as ever. Haas, Racing Point and Toro Rosso were covered by five-hundredths of a second – though it remains to be seen how far Haas’s performance will be blunted now Romain Grosjean has lost the new floor upgrade he used to set their best time.

Daniel Ricciardo, who had to start using his race engine one session earlier after his failure in first practice, believes Renault can get in the mix too. But whichever of these drivers makes it into Q3, they may have to contemplate running the hard tyre early on the race in order reach the end on the preferred one-stop strategy.

“Here it’s difficult to have a race which is more than one-stop,” said Pirelli’s head of F1 and car racing Mario Isola. “We saw a number of cars on the hard compound today for the long runs.

“So it is possible that on if on Sunday we have the soft with high degradation some cars can decide to switch on a hard and keep a one-stop strategy as a baseline, using soft and hard instead of soft and medium.”

Longest stint comparison – second practice

This chart shows all the drivers’ lap times (in seconds) during their longest unbroken stint. Very slow laps omitted. Scroll to zoom, drag to pan, right-click to reset:

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Combined practice times

Pos	Driver	Car	FP1	FP2	Total laps
1	Valtteri Bottas	Mercedes	1’36.957	1’36.256	52
2	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1’37.591	1’36.566	52
3	Charles Leclerc	Ferrari	1’39.249	1’36.642	48
4	Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	1’38.906	1’36.691	47
5	Max Verstappen	Red Bull-Honda	1’37.492	1’36.807	52
6	Alexander Albon	Red Bull-Honda	1’38.084	1’37.288	53
7	Romain Grosjean	Haas-Ferrari	1’39.146	1’37.601	35
8	Sergio Perez	Racing Point-Mercedes	1’39.901	1’37.637	48
9	Daniil Kvyat	Toro Rosso-Honda	1’39.969	1’37.651	54
10	Pierre Gasly	Toro Rosso-Honda	1’40.401	1’37.770	53
11	Carlos Sainz Jnr	McLaren-Renault	1’40.687	1’37.834	55
12	Lando Norris	McLaren-Renault	1’39.628	1’37.918	50
13	Lance Stroll	Racing Point-Mercedes	1’39.864	1’37.985	55
14	Kevin Magnussen	Haas-Ferrari	1’39.350	1’38.080	50
15	Nico Hulkenberg	Renault	1’39.505	1’38.122	51
16	Daniel Ricciardo	Renault	1’40.850	1’38.400	37
17	Kimi Raikkonen	Alfa Romeo-Ferrari	1’39.888	1’38.415	47
18	Antonio Giovinazzi	Alfa Romeo-Ferrari	1’39.423	1’38.464	52
19	George Russell	Williams-Mercedes	1’41.362	1’39.512	55
20	Robert Kubica	Williams-Mercedes	1’40.792	1’40.455	52

Teams’ progress vs 2018

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Quotes: Dieter Rencken

2019 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

• 2019 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix Star Performers
• Leclerc would welcome Hamilton as Ferrari team mate
• Vettel aiming for small improvements and fewer mistakes in 2020
• Perez praises Norris’s driving after last-lap pass
• Dominant Hamilton shows F1’s new generation the way in 2019 finale

Browse all 2019 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix articles