FP2: Hamilton fastest on Friday at COTA

F1 Grand Prix, GP United States, Circuit of The Americas

As temperatures rose to a comfortable 24°C after the chilly morning session, it was Lewis Hamilton who was the fastest man on track, topping Charles Leclerc by 3 tenths.

Charles Leclerc ruled the early proceedings of the session, topping the times with a lap on medium tyres until the soft tyres were brought out of the garages. By then, Lewis Hamilton had come to within 2 tenths of the Ferrari driver with a stint on hard tyres as Verstappen was third fastest on mediums.

By then, Romain Grosjean was already sidelined, as he lost control of his Haas VF-19 through Turn 5 and speared off the track, touching the tyre barrier at Turn 6. The Frenchman reported "I'm ok, but the car is not", with damage at the front obvious as he went head-on into the barriers. The resulting red flag stopped running for approximately 5 minutes.

With soft tyres fitted, Vettel went fastest after 40 minutes of running. He beat Leclerc's previous best by half a second. Bottas and Gasly soon improved with softs as well, but Hamilton proved fastest, recording 1:33.232 on his first lap on soft tyres. He thereby beat Leclerc by 3 tenths after the Monegasque had again improved on his earlier time with medium Pirelli tyres.

As Albon rounded up the top three teams in 6th, Gasly was the best of the rest, albeit a very close match to Albon's 1:34.434.

Carlos Sainz had a somewhat better second practice session with an 8th best time, topping Stroll and Giovinazzi as they rounded off the top 10.

The Haas drivers though, who were both in the top 10 in the morning session, were just 17th and 18th fastest, which for Grosjean was fairly unavoidable after the early crash.

Still, they were both a full second faster than the Williams of George Russell, with Robert Kubica another extra half a second behind in 20th.