Charles Leclerc was fastest on the second morning of pre-season testing for the 2024 Formula 1 season, but the session was curtailed with over an hour still remaining.
The Ferrari driver posted a 1:31.750s on the C3 tyre to sit 0.578s clear of McLaren’s Oscar Piastri – although he remains four-tenths adrift of Max Verstappen’s best.
However, running was red-flagged with 1 hour 50 minutes remaining on the clock after a drain cover on the approach to Turn 11 became dislodged when Leclerc ran over it.
Lewis Hamilton, making his first appearance of testing, and Leclerc went over the debris, with Mercedes and Ferrari then ensuring checks were conducted on their cars.
Following checks at the scene, FIA race director Niels Wittich chose to abandon the session with 1 hour and 10 minutes to go to enable repairs to be made to the track.
Therefore, Leclerc’s time remained uncontested, with the Monegasque also covering 36 laps in total before the unscheduled stoppage curtailed the teams’ run programmes.
However, the teams will be compensated with the extension of the afternoon session by an hour, which will now commence at 14:00 local time and run until 19:00.
Logan Sargeant recovered from a spin and some technical trouble on the opening day to cover 30 laps en route to posting a 1:32.578s to sit third on the timesheets.
Sergio Perez got behind the wheel of the RB20, but the Mexican’s mileage was disrupted when the team had to examine a minor brake fire and he amassed just 20 laps.
Behind Perez came Fernando Alonso for Aston Martin, 1.3s behind Leclerc’s pace-setting time, and Hamilton, who was a further tenth adrift of his former team-mate.
Zhou Guanyu continued to rack up the laps for Sauber in the revamped C44, while Alpine repeated their schedule of the previous day and circulated on the hard tyre.
Pierre Gasly wound up 2s adrift of the benchmark time, but Nico Hulkenberg for Haas and RB’s Yuki Tsunoda endured more lowkey mornings at the bottom of the order.
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