Leclerc heads Sainz, Ricciardo suffers heavy accident

Charles Leclerc led a Ferrari 1-2 during second practice for Formula 1’s Monaco Grand Prix on Friday afternoon.

Monaco native Leclerc, who opened the weekend on top, set a time of 1:12.656s as drivers carried out qualifying simulations in hot and sunny conditions.

Leclerc’s lap left him comfortably clear of his rivals though team-mate Carlos Sainz drew closer with a lap that came later in the session.

Sainz, who was already second, wound up 0.044s behind his Ferrari team-mate.

Red Bull finished a relatively distant third and fourth, with Sergio Perez almost four-tenths behind leader Leclerc, while Max Verstappen finished behind his team-mate.

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Lando Norris, not yet at 100 per cent following his bout of tonsilitis, capped a fine day by classifying fifth but it was a disastrous session for McLaren team-mate Daniel Ricciardo.

Ricciardo brought out the red flags on his first push lap a quarter of the way into the session when he suffered a sizeable accident.

Ricciardo lost control of his McLaren MCL36 through Piscine and slammed into the barriers on the exit of the corner, before skating on for a smaller secondary impact at the next turn.

Ricciardo was uninjured in the accident but it caused the session to be halted and ruled him out of the remainder of running.

After an encouraging weekend in Spain Friday in Monaco was a sterner reality check for Mercedes.

George Russell was three-quarters of a second behind Leclerc in sixth while a scruffy session left Lewis Hamilton down in 12^th overall.

AlphaTauri had both drivers inside the top 10, with Pierre Gasly seventh and Yuki Tsunoda 10^th, while Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel classified eighth and ninth respectively for Alpine and Aston Martin.

Haas and Alfa Romeo were two teams to have a relatively low-key day.

Kevin Magnussen was 11^th, with Mick Schumacher 17^th, while Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu classified 13^th and 15^th respectively.

Saturday’s final practice session is scheduled for 13:00 local time.

	Position		Driver	Team	Time	Gap	Laps
	1		Charles Leclerc	Ferrari	1:12.656		30
	2		Carlos Sainz Jr	Ferrari	1:12.700	0.044	32
	3		Sergio Perez	Red Bull	1:13.035	0.379	31
	4		Max Verstappen	Red Bull	1:13.103	0.447	33
	5		Lando Norris	McLaren	1:13.294	0.638	24
	6		George Russell	Mercedes	1:13.406	0.750	31
	7		Pierre Gasly	AlphaTauri	1:13.636	0.980	32
	8		Fernando Alonso	Alpine	1:13.912	1.256	31
	9		Sebastian Vettel	Aston Martin	1:14.059	1.403	32
	10		Yuki Tsunoda	AlphaTauri	1:14.134	1.478	27
	11		Kevin Magnussen	Haas	1:14.239	1.583	32
	12		Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1:14.267	1.611	29
	13		Valtteri Bottas	Alfa Romeo	1:14.468	1.812	28
	14		Alex Albon	Williams	1:14.486	1.830	33
	15		Guanyu Zhou	Alfa Romeo	1:14.525	1.869	23
	16		Lance Stroll	Aston Martin	1:14.623	1.967	29
	17		Mick Schumacher	Haas	1:14.894	2.238	33
	18		Esteban Ocon	Alpine	1:15.216	2.560	34
	19		Nicholas Latifi	Williams	1:16.276	3.620	33
	20		Daniel Ricciardo	McLaren			2