Bottas lays down gauntlet by leading British F1 GP practice ahead of Hamilton, but penalty looms

Valtteri Bottas topped both British Grand Prix practice sessions on Friday to continue his assault on the summit of the Formula 1 drivers' championship. However his challenge for this weekend has been dampened somewhat by needing to take a new gearbox, as team mate Lewis Hamilton did in Austria. This means that Bottas will move back five grid positions from wherever he qualifies.

Mercedes revealed on Friday evening that Bottas' gearbox had shown similar damage to Hamilton's but less severe and they had hoped to coax it to the end of the six race cycle. However that did not work out and so he's taking the penalty at Silverstone.

Both Mercedes and Ferrari have new engines for their drivers here; scheduled updates. Mercedes' Andy Cowell revealed that these are not a significant step forward and had already been run by customers taking a new engine in Canada.

Ferrari's engine upgrade is believed to be a step of around 10-15hp, with also some modifications required to be made following a technical directive from the FIA on combustion. Raikkonen has a new turbo, while Vettel is already on his fourth turbo for the season and the next one will force a grid penalty.

On track, Bottas set the fastest time of 1m28.496s on super-soft tyres in FP2, beating team-mate Lewis Hamilton by 0.047s in the process; but his time was set on the slower soft tyres. Kimi Raikkonen was the fastest Ferrari driver with his time of 1m28.828s proving sufficient to keep Sebastian Vettel at bay by 0.128s.

Bottas started Friday's FP2 on medium tyres, anticipating a long-run on the hard-wearing circuit on Sunday, but the rest of the grid emerged with softs then equipped super-softs for the second practice session of the day.

Becketts caught numerous drivers out on Friday as the cars carry a lot more speed through the preceding Maggots corner this year with the extra downforce. It wasn't a case of the cars looking skittish; rather the 2017-spec cars shine, planted through these high-speed turns. Wth the new-found pace comes a new-found challenge.

Raikkonen was caught out mid-session as was Williams' Felipe Massa at the same corner, the Brazilian having finished FP2 eighth.

Max Verstappen was the last driver to set a time within a second of Bottas finishing fifth, six-tenths off the top. His team-mate Daniel Ricciardo followed in sixth, 1.090s slower than Bottas.

Renault had contrasting performances from their pair of drivers. While Jolyon Palmer finished 18th, ahead of both Saubers, Nico Hulkenberg finished FP2 seventh with a tidy time of 1m29.936s – Massa followed by 0.070s.

Rounding out the top 10 was Fernando Alonso (ninth), producing another stunning short-run performance in his McLaren while Esteban Ocon finished 10th in his Force India VJM10 having completed the most laps (42) by the end of FP2.

The pair of Toro Rossos took 11th and 12th, with Carlos Sainz Jr leading having set a time of 1m30.555s. Sainz spun at Becketts early on in FP2 and a new floor was fitted to his car with less than half the session remaining, when he finally managed to set a time. He completed the fewest number of laps with 26.

Team-mate Daniil Kvyat was the only other driver apart from Bottas to equip medium compounds for FP2, finishing just 0.012s away from Sainz.

Sergio Perez was 0.241s slower than his tenth-place team-mate, finishing 13th and holding off Romain Grosjean, whose sixth-place finish in Austria will be hard to repeat here at Silverstone. The Haas did, however, complete a long and consistent run on super-softs and the Frenchman rarely finished over 1m35.500s over FP2.

Haas counterpart Kevin Magnussen was sluggish in 17th, behind rookies Lance Stroll (15th) and Stoffel Vandoorne in 17th. Marcus Ericsson, who complained of “understeer everywhere,” was the faster of the Sauber duo but the Swiss outfit's returns on its 2016-spec Ferrari engine are evidently diminishing at this high-speed circuit.

FP1

Bottas edged Hamilton – both Mercedes on soft tyres – by 0.078s in FP1 earlier on Friday while rival Vettel was sixth fastest on super-softs, 1.411s off the summit having spun at Becketts. Vettel was testing the 'shield' device, a proposed measure to increase drivers' safety.

The two Red Bulls, led by Verstappen, were third and fourth within half a second of Bottas and Raikkonen followed in fifth.

Toro Rosso's Kvyat was 1.1789s behind Bottas in seventh while Alonso came out swinging, eighth fastest. Williams' Massa (ninth) and McLaren's rookie Vandoorne rounded out the top 10 in an FP1 where only Hamilton, Verstappen and Ricciardo finished within a second off the top spot.

At the rear was the Renault pair led by Hulkenberg while Wehrlein was the fastest of the two back-marking Saubers.

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Free Practice 2 Times, 2017 Formula 1 British Grand Prix: