Fernando Alonso thrives when conditions become difficult: the Spaniard was the fastest in the second free practice session of the Canadian GP with the Aston Martin equipped with the new solutions. The Asturian with the soft compound slicks reached a time of 1’15″810, an excellent performance considering that in the first half hour a drizzle never stopped falling which did not prevent him from finding good grip with the new asphalt.
The “green girl” made a good impression as Lance Stroll also finished third, six tenths behind his teammate. Then the rain increased in intensity and, after a short stop, the riders returned to the track with intermediate tires to carry out a long run on wet tires in this strange GP in Montreal.
George Russell was inserted between the two AMR24s with Mercedes: the Englishman arrived 463 thousandths of a second from the top, while Lewis Hamilton did not go beyond the seventh fastest time with a gap of one second from the top and over half a second from his teammate .
Ferrari did not mount the soft and dedicated itself to the medium so Charles Leclerc’s performance is to be considered very interesting: the Monegasque reached 1’16″556 with the yellows giving the sensation of a good adaptability of the SF-24 at the Canadian track, while Carlos Sainz, 13th, had dedicated himself to working with a greater fuel load. McLaren copied the Cavallino strategy so it should not be surprising if Oscar Pistri is only 16th and Lando Norris even last, but the performances they must be taken with a grain of salt. Leclerc is under investigation because in the first phase of the session he took to the track with a set of intermediate tires: he shouldn’t have because the race direction had not yet declared the session wet. Even if it was drizzling did the Cavallino team or Wittich’s staff sleep?
The one who showed a sign of life is Daniel Ricciardo fifth with the Racing Bulls: this time the Australian left Yuki Tsunoda in eighth place a couple of tenths away, but the Faenza car seems to be at ease on the curbs of Montreal, while Red Bull continues to suffer. Sergio Perez is only tenth with the RB20, also preceded by Alexander Albon’s Williams. To find Max Verstappen you have to go down to 18th place: the three-time world champion was forced to return to the pits due to overheating in the rear of the RB20.
An acrid burning smell spread in the garage, so the car was isolated for fear of high voltage leaks. Max abandoned the car by jumping from the bodywork and only after a few minutes were the mechanics able to intervene to work on the hybrid of engine 3 which apparently cooked as soon as it was assembled. You only had to look at the very worried faces of the men in Milton Keynes to understand that something was happening that they were no longer used to.
A beautiful performance of genius and recklessness: we are referring to Kevin Magnussen who climbed up to sixth place with the Haas, while Nico Hulkenberg did not go beyond 15th place. For once the Dane deserved the headlines for something positive.
Esteban Ocon is 11th with Alpine, with Pierre Gasly 19th: the latter worked for the race. Logan Sargeant, despite a couple of thrilling straights in the chicane, grabbed a decent 12th place with the second FW44.
Valtteri Bottas with the Sauber is 14th, while Guanyu Zhou is 17th: the Chinese, after crashing the C44 in the first round, had to look for some confidence again.
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