F1 – Ocon tops second practice at Interlagos ahead of Pérez and Russell

Alpine F1’s Esteban Ocon went quickest in the final practice session for the 2022 FIA Formula 1 São Paulo Grand Prix beating Red Bull’s Sergio Pérez by almost two tenths of a second as George Russell finished third. 

With qualifying completed yesterday and all eyes on Saturday afternoon’s Sprint, the second hour of practice was a relatively quiet affair with longer runs and race preparation dominating proceedings. 

Russell led the way for some time during the opening phase of the session with the Mercedes used soft tyres to post a lap of 1:15.115. He then lowered his own benchmark by two tenths of a second to sit half a second clear of Pérez, who was running on hard compound Pirelli tyres. But with little attention being paid to lap time the positions were not significant, with World Champion Max Verstappen down in twelth place for much of the opening phase. 

Ocon then took on a set of soft tyres and he claimed top spot ahead of Russell with a lap time of 1:14.604. Hamilton climbed to third place on softs, lapping two tenths of a second off his teammate.

With 20 minutes remaining Pérez and Verstappen moved to scrubbed softs and Pérez took P2 while Verstappen went fourth to split the Mercedes. Alpine’s Fernando Alonso popped up with a lap of 1:15.409 to edge ahead of Verstappen.

That ended the improvements and with Verstappen fifth at the flag, sixth place went to Hamilton, with AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly seventh ahead of the Haas pairing of Mick Schumacher in P8 and Kevin Magnussen who scored the first pole position of his career on Friday. McLaren’s Lando Norris completed the top 10 ahead of Carlos Sainz as the Spanish driver’s Ferrari team-mate Charles Leclerc finished 13^th. 

2022 FIA Formula 1 São Paulo Grand Prix – Free Practice 2
1 Esteban Ocon Alpine/Renault 11:14.604 28 207.929
2 Sergio Pérez Red Bull 11:14.788 0.184 36 207.418
3 George Russell Mercedes 11:14.916 0.312 31 207.063
4 Fernando Alonso Alpine/Renault 11:15.049 0.445 29 206.696
5 Max Verstappen Red Bull 11:15.098 0.494 30 206.562
6 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 11:15.137 0.533 33 206.454
7 Pierre Gasly AlphaTauri/Red Bull 11:15.636 1.032 32 205.092
8 Mick Schumacher Haas/Ferrari 11:15.684 1.080 40 204.962
9 Kevin Magnussen Haas/Ferrari 11:15.815 1.211 38 204.608
10 Lando Norris McLaren/Mercedes 11:15.851 1.247 25 204.511
11 Carlos Sainz Ferrari 11:15.856 1.252 38 204.497
12 Yuki Tsunoda AlphaTauri/Red Bull 11:15.865 1.261 32 204.473
13 Charles Leclerc Ferrari 11:15.868 1.264 37 204.465
14 Daniel Ricciardo McLaren/Mercedes 11:15.994 1.390 28 204.126
15 Valtteri Bottas Alfa Romeo/Ferrari 11:16.047 1.443 34 203.984
16 Nicholas Latifi Williams/Mercedes 11:16.181 1.577 34 203.625
17 Lance Stroll Aston Martin/Mercedes 11:16.263 1.659 43 203.406
18 Sebastian Vettel Aston Martin/Mercedes 11:16.400 1.796 44 203.041
19 Zhou Guanyu Alfa Romeo/Ferrari 11:16.468 1.864 37 202.861
20 Logan Sargeant Williams/Mercedes 11:16.480 1.876 28 202.829