Vettel smashes lap record in interrupted FP2 in Monaco

Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel smashed the lap record in the second practice session for the Monaco Grand Prix with a time of 1m12.720s beating the Red Bull of Daniel Ricciardo by nearly half a second.

Mercedes struggled with their qualifying pace which could be causing the drivers and engineers concern as Lewis Hamilton finished eighth and Valtteri Bottas in 10th.

Race pace also looked ominous between both championship contenders as Ferrari were lapping on average half a second faster than the Mercedes in the long-run phase of the session.

Toro Rosso were the surprise team of the session, both cars looked to have great one lap pace with Daniil Kvyat and Carlos Sainz fourth and fifth fastest respectively, certainly, one team that could get into Q3 and upset the order of the top teams if they can carry this pace through to Saturday.

McLaren also made a rare appearance away from the bottom of the timesheet just outside of the top ten, the chassis clearly playing a great part in their performance around the streets of Monte Carlo as the power unit is not as vital to outright lap time.

During the first part of the session, the Force India of Esteban Ocon was the first driver of the weekend to make contact with the barrier after losing the rear of the car and hit the wall at the first right-hander of Portier, luckily for the Frenchman only causing just superficial damage to the VJM10.

Jolyon Palmer’s season has still yet to find any luck with a clean race weekend after his Renault power unit started smoking just 15 minutes into the session causing the Briton to stop his RS17 on the exit of Portier.

Sauber’s Marcus Ericsson escaped with no damage to his car after a nail-biting moment as the Swede glanced the barrier on the exit of Casino square with all four wheels locked up. Luckily he managed to carry on.

Lance Stroll caused a red flag just before the hour mark of the session after hitting the wall on the exit of Massanet leaving debris all of the track, the remains of the FW40 managed to get craned over the side of the track with ease thanks to superb marshals in Monaco.

Twitter: TOP TEN: END OF SESSION
1 VET
2 RIC
3 RAI
4 KVY
5 SAI
6 VER
7 PER
8 HAM
9 MAG
10 BOT
#MonacoGP #FP2 https://t.co/yc5fluzBSO (@F1)