Both Friday practice sessions have each been cut to one hour in 2021, instead of the usual 90 minutes each. FP1 was topped by Bottas, and he repeated the feat in FP2 – but only by 0.01s from teammate Lewis Hamilton.

Red Bull's Max Verstappen hit trouble when his driveshaft snapped in FP2, while Ferrari's Charles Leclerc hit the wall late on.

Emilia Romagna Grand Prix FP1 results: Bottas fastest from Hamilton

Cla	Driver		Laps	Time	Gap
1	Valtteri Bottas		23	1'16.564
2	Lewis Hamilton		25	1'16.605	0.041
3	Max Verstappen		21	1'16.622	0.058
4	Charles Leclerc		13	1'16.796	0.232
5	Pierre Gasly		21	1'16.888	0.324
6	Carlos Sainz Jr.		26	1'16.888	0.324
7	Fernando Alonso		23	1'17.457	0.893
8	Lance Stroll		19	1'17.489	0.925
9	Nicholas Latifi		24	1'17.739	1.175
10	Daniel Ricciardo		23	1'17.769	1.205
11	George Russell		25	1'17.866	1.302
12	Kimi Raikkonen		16	1'17.883	1.319
13	Lando Norris		16	1'17.935	1.371
14	Sebastian Vettel		23	1'17.984	1.420
15	Antonio Giovinazzi		24	1'18.058	1.494
16	Sergio Perez		15	1'18.228	1.664
17	Esteban Ocon		20	1'18.360	1.796
18	Nikita Mazepin		22	1'18.823	2.259
19	Mick Schumacher		18	1'19.480	2.916
20	Yuki Tsunoda		11	1'19.781	3.217
View full results

What happened in Free Practice 1?

The session began with Red Bull’s Sergio Perez and Haas’s Nikita Mazepin suffering early spins, while AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda visited Tamburello gravel trap after 15 minutes, from which he escaped but would remain rooted at the bottom of the times.

Teams used the majority of the session to run on hard tyres, Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz leading the way on this rubber on 1m17.296s – with the second AlphaTauri of Pierre Gasly also taking his turn at the top of the times.

The incidents continued, as Verstappen suffered a gravelly off at the start of his second hard-tyred run, while Hamilton chose the Variante Alta for his trip off the circuit. The session was interrupted with 22 minutes to go, when Alpine’s Esteban Ocon and Perez collided on the approach to the Villeneuve chicane. Both cars were damaged, stranding them out on track and causing a red flag.

Having lost over 10 minutes of track time, all teams emerged using soft tyres, with Sainz lowering his P1 time to 1m17.197s.

Hamilton was the first driver into the 1m16s bracket, as Bottas got traffic on his first run on softs, forcing him to abort the lap, but he regrouped to set the quickest time of 1m16.564s to beat his teammate’s 1m16.605s. Verstappen was third, 0.058s off the pace – all three of them taking turns in P1 in the final moments of the session.

Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was fourth fastest, despite spending over half the session stranded in the pits while the team investigated a problem. Gasly was fifth, ahead of Sainz, Fernando Alonso (Alpine) and Lance Stroll (Aston Martin).

Latifi suffered a big moment at Rivazza and slid through the gravel, but ended up an impressive ninth fastest, ahead of Daniel Ricciardo’s McLaren. The session ended as it began, with Mazepin spinning – this time hitting the wall near the pit entry.

Emilia Romagna Grand Prix FP2 results: Bottas fastest from Hamilton again

Cla	Driver		Laps	Time	Gap
1	Valtteri Bottas		25	1'15.551
2	Lewis Hamilton		26	1'15.561	0.010
3	Pierre Gasly		30	1'15.629	0.078
4	Carlos Sainz Jr.		30	1'15.834	0.283
5	Charles Leclerc		28	1'16.371	0.820
6	Sergio Perez		25	1'16.411	0.860
7	Yuki Tsunoda		26	1'16.419	0.868
8	Lando Norris		23	1'16.485	0.934
9	Antonio Giovinazzi		25	1'16.513	0.962
10	Lance Stroll		25	1'16.737	1.186
11	Esteban Ocon		27	1'16.817	1.266
12	Nicholas Latifi		29	1'16.823	1.272
13	Fernando Alonso		27	1'16.835	1.284
14	Max Verstappen		5	1'16.999	1.448
15	Sebastian Vettel		27	1'17.092	1.541
16	George Russell		31	1'17.179	1.628
17	Kimi Raikkonen		27	1'17.273	1.722
18	Daniel Ricciardo		24	1'17.281	1.730
19	Mick Schumacher		28	1'17.350	1.799
20	Nikita Mazepin		16	1'17.857	2.306
View full results

What happened in Free Practice 2?

In FP2, the medium tyres were used by teams from the start. Leclerc led the way initially, eager to make up for his lack of track time in the first session, heading an early Ferrari 1-2.

McLaren’s Lando Norris suffered an off through the gravel in the opening five minutes, before Bottas and then Hamilton surged to the top of the times, Bottas setting the pace at 1m15.551s.

The main incident of FP2 happened after just 10 minutes, when Verstappen ground to a halt at the end of the pit lane after suffering a driveshaft failure exiting Rivazza, costing him valuable race-simulation running time.

Leclerc was the first of the frontrunners to switch to the soft tyre but had his 1m15.367s P1 time taken away from exceeding track limits at Piratella. On their soft-tyred runs both Hamilton and Bottas were slower than expected, seemingly struggling for rear-end grip – although Hamilton did improve to get within a hundredth of a second of his teammate's medium-tyred fastest time.

Gasly set the third fastest time, ahead of Sainz. Leclerc and Perez were next up, from Tsunoda and Norris.

Mazepin had one more off, a brief grassy moment at Variante Alta, but the session was ended early by Leclerc shunting at Rivazza, damaging his right-front corner against the wall.