(Motorsport-Total.com) – George Russell secured the best time in the second free practice session for the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix in Imola 2022. The Mercedes driver completed his fastest lap in 1:19.457 minutes and referred Sergio Perez in the one-hour session (Red Bull / +0.081) and Charles Leclerc (Ferrari / +0.283) on the places.
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George Russell secured the fastest time in second free practice at Imola
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However, one should not attach great importance to the lap times. Normally, qualifying is worked on in Saturday practice, so that everyone drives with less fuel and you can make comparisons. But because there is no qualifying on Saturday, but an F1 sprint as the “main act”, the drivers and teams tested very different programs.
Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) was fourth, half a second behind his team-mate, followed by Fernando Alonso (Alpine) and Carlos Sainz (Ferrari). Max Verstappen (Red Bull) was seventh. He was 0.914 seconds behind.
On the subject:
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F1 live ticker: voices and news from Imola
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There were problems at McLaren. Daniel Ricciardo had to skip training completely. A defect in the area of the power unit is suspected. Lando Norris complained about his brakes when he pitted after just three laps. And with Valtteri Bottas (Alfa Romeo), the exhaust prevented him from exiting the track.
“After the good day yesterday, this is not a good start,” regrets McLaren team boss Andreas Seidl. “I don’t want to say anything about Daniel’s problem. With Lando it was the braking system. Except for one installation lap at the end, he couldn’t drive anymore. Not an ideal start.”
Bottas: The team underestimated the problem with the car
For Bottas, the cause was a late episode of his coastdown in Q3 on Friday. Upon inspecting the car, the team found that a wiring harness and other systems were fried, so the entire chassis was swapped out for the sake of simplicity. Because of the parc ferme rules, this could only start on Saturday morning. Too tight for FT3.
The power unit from Friday’s chassis was transferred to the new chassis, but a new gearbox had to be installed. There is no grid penalty for this. Team boss Frederic Vasseur explains: “We had a problem with the exhaust. The components all around burned off, including the whole wiring harness and the gearbox housing. It’s easier to change the whole chassis there.”
“We secretly expected yesterday that we would have to do that, but the car is sealed. If you break the seal, you start from the pit lane – or you wait for this morning and risk losing the second practice session. We We were hoping to make it in time, but I guess we were overly optimistic.”
How did it go for the two Germans?
Sebastian Vettel was unable to confirm the strong performance from qualifying and finished 15th in the Aston Martin, 1.698 seconds behind. Mick Schumacher (Haas) was 13th, just behind his teammate Kevin Magnussen in P12.
After the rainy Friday, the drivers drove in dry conditions and temperatures of almost 20 degrees Celsius. Drivers and teams used this to tinker with their set-ups for dry tracks. And to test long runs with regard to the F1 sprint on Saturday (4:30 p.m. CEST in the Formula 1 live ticker) and the race on Sunday.