70th Anniversary GP: Hamilton tops FP2 from Bottas, Ricciardo

Under cloudy skies at a nevertheless hot Silverstone, Hamilton wound up fastest on the medium Pirelli rubber, 0.176s quicker than his teammate's effort on the soft tyres.

The session was ended with just over two minutes to go after late mechanical problems caused Sebastian Vettel and Antonio Giovinazzi to stop on track.

Kevin Magnussen and Daniil Kvyat set the early pace on the medium tyres before Racing Point's Lance Stroll established the top spot benchmark at 1m27.179s on the softs, with nearly 15 minutes of the 90-minute session completed.

Nico Hulkenberg then demoted his Racing Point teammate with his own initial run on the softs, before Stroll hit back to retake first place seconds before Bottas completed his first flying lap on the mediums at the 20-minute mark.

Bottas improved P1 to 1m25.917s – 1.21s quicker than Stroll had just gone – while Hamilton ventured out for the first time in the session.

The world champion lowered the P1 time to a 1m25.911s with his first flying lap, which was set on the soft tyres, which put him 0.006s quicker than Bottas's medium effort.

As the session moved past the half-hour mark, the Mercedes drivers had their rubber inverted, with Bottas moving to the softs.

He used the red-walled rubber to retake first place with a 1m25.782s, with the fastest time in all three sectors at that point.

Five minutes later, Hamilton established the fastest time of the session with a 1m25.606s – although Bottas kept his quickest time in sector one.

Just before the field focused on their long-run data-gathering, Daniel Ricciardo, who had earlier had a time deleted for running wide at Copse where the FIA is policing track limits, popped his Renault into third with a flying lap on the softs.

That lap left Ricciardo 0.815s adrift of Hamilton's fastest time, but ahead of Red Bull's Max Verstappen, who set his fastest time on the softs shortly after his former teammate had gone third.

Stroll and Hulkenberg set their best times on the medium rubber, with Stroll edging ahead by 0.3s in their intra-Racing Point battle, to end the session in fifth and sixth.

Charles Leclerc finished the session in seventh, ahead of McLaren duo Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz, with Esteban Ocon rounding out the top 10.

Alex Albon finished 11th in the second Red Bull, ahead of AlphaTauri drivers Daniil Kvyat and Pierre Gasly.

Vettel finished 14th in the standings but he disrupted proceedings late on when his Ferrari suffered an engine failure as he ran down Silverstone's old pit straight and he pulled over to the inside of Copse.

This was covered by the virtual safety car, but the session was red flagged in the final minutes when Giovinazzi's car lost drive approaching Maggotts and he ground to a halt in the runoff area ahead of Becketts, and FP2 as not restarted.

Cla	Driver		Chassis	Laps	Time	Gap
1	Lewis Hamilton		Mercedes	22	1'25.606
2	Valtteri Bottas		Mercedes	22	1'25.782	0.176
3	Daniel Ricciardo		Renault	29	1'26.421	0.815
4	Max Verstappen		Red Bull	15	1'26.437	0.831
5	Lance Stroll		Racing Point	24	1'26.501	0.895
6	Nico Hulkenberg		Racing Point	26	1'26.746	1.140
7	Charles Leclerc		Ferrari	32	1'26.812	1.206
8	Lando Norris		McLaren	26	1'26.867	1.261
9	Carlos Sainz Jr.		McLaren	24	1'26.918	1.312
10	Esteban Ocon		Renault	25	1'26.928	1.322
11	Alex Albon		Red Bull	25	1'26.960	1.354
12	Daniil Kvyat		AlphaTauri	33	1'27.002	1.396
13	Pierre Gasly		AlphaTauri	31	1'27.128	1.522
14	Sebastian Vettel		Ferrari	30	1'27.198	1.592
15	Romain Grosjean		Haas	28	1'27.294	1.688
16	George Russell		Williams	31	1'27.320	1.714
17	Kimi Raikkonen		Alfa Romeo	30	1'27.535	1.929
18	Kevin Magnussen		Haas	28	1'27.582	1.976
19	Nicholas Latifi		Williams	32	1'27.683	2.077
20	Antonio Giovinazzi		Alfa Romeo	26	1'27.955	2.349
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