Charles Leclerc topped a severely interrupted second practice session at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix after two crashes in quick succession truncated running by more than half an hour.
The 60-minute session was suspended after just eight minutes when Leclerc’s teammate, Carlos Sainz, lost control of his car at Turn 3 and slammed into the inside barrier. The Ferrari appeared to bottom out over a bump through the long right-hander — several drivers complained of bottoming through that section of track during FP1 — when it snapped from beneath him.
The Spaniard said dirty air from a car ahead prevented him from saving the spin, which sent him careening out of control into the wall in a plume of tire smoke, where the SF-23 sustained serious damage.
The Tecpro barriers were also worse for wear, and their repair wiped approximately 26 minutes off the clock. But the session had resumed for barely a minute when Nico Hulkenberg brought out the red flags a second time when he smashed his Haas car exiting the first turn.
Hulkenberg mounted the wide, flat curb exiting Turn 1 when his car spun suddenly and rear-ended the concrete wall on the inside of the circuit, bringing his session to an immediately close.
It took a further six minutes to get running back underway — bringing the total time under red flag to around 33 minutes — at which point there was only 16 minutes left in the session.
It was a frenetic quarter-hour of running, not only for the lost time in this session but also because 10 drivers had given up their cars to rookie and inexperienced drivers in the earlier first practice session, leaving half the grid down on track time.
Verstappen, who was one of those to skip FP1, was among the most eager to make the most of what was left of the only representative twilight practice session of the weekend, barging past George Russell at the end of the pit lane as the track re-opened and then bizarrely attempting to pass around Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes outside through the narrow tunnel connecting the pits with the circuit, almost causing a collision.
🟢 GREEN LIGHT 🟢
Overtaking in the Yas Marina tunnel 👀
Max Verstappen is keen to get out on track with only 16 minutes of FP2 to go 😅#AbuDhabiGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/d4Lwospbpa
— Formula 1 (@F1) November 24, 2023
A condensed program on the medium and soft tires was good enough to put him only third in the order, 0.173s adrift of session leader Leclerc. The Dutchman complained that his car was bouncing “like a kangaroo” in the final sector, though by the end of the shortened session he was fastest through the final split.
Between him and leader Leclerc slotted McLaren’s Lando Norris, who was a close match for the leading Ferrari at just 0.043s off the pace.
Valtteri Bottas claimed fourth for the second consecutive session, pipping Sergio Perez, who had several late laps on the soft tire blocked by traffic.
Russell finished sixth ahead of Zhou Guanyu and Hamilton, while Pierre Gasly and Oscar Piastri completed the top 10.
Fernando Alonso, who also made a move through the pit lane tunnel, his pass on one of the AlphaTauri drivers, finishes 11th ahead of Daniel Ricciardo, Lance Stroll, Esteban Ocon and Yuki Tsunoda.
Alex Albon resumed control of his Williams to finish sixth ahead of Kevin Magnussen and Logan Sargeant, with the crashed-out Sainz and Hulkenberg completing the order in 19th and 20th.
