F1: Perez puts Red Bull Honda on top in Practice for USGP

With many Mexican fans in attendance, Mexican Sergio Perez turned the fastest lap of 1m34.946s to top the 2nd practice session for the USGP at COTA. Thanks to the track temperature rising by around 10 Degrees from earlier, the times overall were slower – Perez’s 1m 34.946s nearly a tenth slower than Bottas went in the morning session.

Lando Norris was 2nd quick for McLaren, 0.257s behind the Red Bull.

Lewis Hamilton, who is expected to win on Sunday like he always does here, was 3rd quick, 0.364s back.

Hamilton’s Mercedes teammate Valtteri Bottas was 4th fastest 0.414s behind while Daniel Ricciardo rounded out the top-5 in the 2nd McLaren.

Lance Stroll was an impressive 6th ahead of Charles Leclerc, Max Verstappen, Carlos Sainz Jr. and Antonio Giovinazzi.

As for Verstappen, he didn’t set a representative time on the softs, and as such, his true pace there was an unknown. The Dutchman wound up eighth in the end.

The session ended under red when Fernando Alonso spun into the barriers in Turn 19. Replays show he took slightly too much curb, spinning around under acceleration and sliding through the gravel. The contact with the barriers were mercifully quite light.

The track was wrecking havoc with lap times out there in FP2, with plenty of times deleted for track limit infringements. But while the drivers have to accept the blame for that one, they aren’t to blame for the conditions, which saw lines of blisters quickly appearing on the red-marked soft tires with extremely high track temps.

Sebastien Vettel never tried to set a fast time since he has to tke a grid penalty.

“Today we ran a different practice program to the majority of the field because we will be taking a grid penalty [due to changing elements of the power unit], so that means our focus is on the race, rather than qualifying. We maximized the sessions to work on longer runs and gather lots of data to review. Hopefully, that will help us on Sunday and we will be in good shape for the race. Although we will start further back, Austin is a track where you can overtake and the hotter conditions will be a tough test for all of us, which will hopefully create opportunities to move forward in the race.”

Tomorrow will be overcast with possible rain for qualifying..\

Select Quotes

Sergio Perez
“Today was a good day and FP2 was promising, but it’s going to be very tight in qualifying tomorrow. Mercedes were certainly very strong so let’s see what they have when it counts. I think we have to find a couple of tenths and put everything together to be in the mix for pole. There’s a lot to be done now with the engineers to try and improve the car, I think there is some margin to improve our long run pace and our tire degradation, but all in all it was a positive Friday.”

Max Verstappen
“Overall it wasn’t easy out there today, the track is quite bumpy and to find the right compromise on the car hasn’t been the easiest, but there are a few positive things to look at, and we’ll continue to work on that overnight. In FP2, we didn’t manage to put the lap in on the soft tire, and it was also just a bit of a mess with the traffic. Hopefully, everything will come together tomorrow, so we can get a good lap in qualifying.”

Valtteri Bottas
I think we have a good car here and even with my five-place grid penalty, we can still have a good race from wherever I end up starting. Today showed it is pretty close at the front but it’s still all to play for. Because of the penalty, the main thing for me was focusing on the long-run pace and that’s what we did, especially in FP2. There’s still a lot of work to do with the set-up, as it wasn’t easy to drive and, in some places, the track has lost quite a lot of grip, so the balance was inconsistent. But we’ll look at the best options tonight and see what we can do, because I will be racing other cars and need to overtake if I want to make it to the podium and fight for the win.

Lewis Hamilton
Generally, it’s been a good day but there’s still work to do. The first session was really good, but I made some changes for FP2 and I wasn’t as happy with the car. The pace wasn’t bad, but I think we lost a bit of ground to everyone, so we need to dig into the data tonight and figure out why. The surface here feels rougher and that means it’s a struggle to keep the temperature out of the tires, so there’s more degradation than we’ve experienced before. It’s been a productive day so we have plenty of findings that we should be able to navigate well and improve for tomorrow.

Andrew Shovlin
The first session was very good in terms of single lap pace; both cars were getting good grip out of the Soft tires and the balance was in a good place. The track is pretty bumpy, which causes issues in a couple of corners, but it’s not so different to previous years and certainly not as bad as we feared. The second session didn’t look as strong, it was easy to overheat the tires and that was making it harder to be consistent. Lewis had a lap deleted that would have us looking more competitive, but regardless, it seemed like we’d lost a bit of pace. That could be down to a number of things; perhaps we’d not adapted to the hotter conditions well, others may have improved, or it could be that some of our changes haven’t worked as expected. It’s useful to have found a few issues that we can get stuck into this evening as there’s plenty we can do to improve, but the overall feeling from the second session is that it’s going to be very tight at the front and both Red Bulls are looking like they are in the fight for pole.

Charles Leclerc #16
“It feels great to be back in the United States. The atmosphere here is always so special, both at the circuit and around the city of Austin. Everyone is really friendly and enthusiastic and it’s been great to already see fans waving their flags and supporting us in the grandstands today. In terms of our sessions, we ran through the planned program, testing a bit of everything. What was challenging were the bumps on the track which made it very tricky to drive. With temperatures running quite high, tire management was a key factor. Tires overheated, especially in the third sector. You have to find a perfect balance between pushing in the first sector while losing time in the last one, or saving the tires in the first part to be quicker at the end of your lap. We will do some more work in FP3 to understand how to optimize this ahead of qualifying tomorrow.”

Carlos Sainz #55
“It’s good to be back in Austin! The track felt great as always, right from the start. It’s a great circuit and very enjoyable to drive. It’s got bumpier over the years, but I think it gives character to the track, and it presents new challenges for the cars and the drivers.
We tried different set-ups today and improved a bit from FP1 to FP2. Overall, I’m happy with our Friday and the pace is promising, taking into account I got traffic in Sector 3 of my fast lap and couldn’t close an otherwise good-looking lap.  Track temperature was very high today and that obviously had an effect on the long runs, where degradation appeared quickly on the Softs. That could make things tricky come Sunday, so we’ll keep an eye on it.”

Practice 2 Results