United States – Free Practice 2: Hamilton on top, Grosjean on foot

Second free practice session in Austin under cloudy weather. Track debut for George Russell, the first to leave the pits, who discovers the circuit after giving up his seat to Nicholas Latifi in the first session.

After 10 minutes of the session, the red flag was waved following Romain Grosjean’s off-track excursion in the first sector. A violent swing in the first sector that the Frenchman couldn’t correct took him off the track. With a broken front wing and left suspension, the Haas driver will go through the medical center before walking back to his pit.

The short interruption did not hinder the teams’ work. Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton worked on hard tires to gather information for their teams. The cool temperatures aren’t helping the tires to heat up, but the performance level remains decent, at only 7-8 tenths off the time set by Charles Leclerc on mediums at 1:34.434.

With one hour remaining in the session, a bump catches Giovinazzi by surprise, causing him to take a hit, though without any serious damage to the car. The entire field ran on medium, hard, or 2020 prototype tires. At this stage, regardless of the type of tires used, the performances are too different between the cars to establish a real hierarchy.

Halfway through the session, soft tires begin to make an appearance and lap times drop. Lewis Hamilton sets a mark at 1:33.232 ahead of Leclerc by +0.3s, Vettel by +0.6s, and Bottas by +0.8s. A strong performance from Gasly in fifth at +1.2s.

After an hour of the session, the teams are working on the durability of the soft tires in race pace, no one improves. The drivers have made standing start attempts and the teams have been practicing pit stops. Lando Norris, still struggling with the track he is discovering for the first time, is in the second half of the standings, three-tenths behind his teammate. A difficult weekend is in store for the Englishman.

In the last quarter hour, Sebastian Vettel went off the track during acceleration. He went into the dirt and gravel without any damage for the SF90, which was able to continue the session. A big scare also for Kvyat in the fast curve of the last sector, who recovered his car before the gravel trap. Work on race pace at the end of the session showed Ferrari struggling against an impressive Lewis Hamilton, the fastest of the top teams even on hard tires.