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The teams look to have taken split approaches not only to their setups for this weekend, at least at this point, but also their run plans and strategies. But things got off to a similar start for the trio.

FP2 saw all three drivers begin with single lap qualifying simulations on the soft tyre for Norris and Verstappen, with Piastri joining them on the C5 after a few runs on the medium. Norris’ fastest lap time was 0.363s quicker than Verstappen’s and 0.680s quicker than Piastri’s on the equal rubber.

Analysing the sector differences between the trio indicates that Piastri was simply bleeding time everywhere compared to his teammate, and Verstappen therefore too, something he said post-session came down to him being unable to get the grip out of the soft tyre.

Piastri did miss out on FP1’s running as his car was handed to McLaren IndyCar driver Pato O’Ward to complete the team’s final rookie practice session of the season, but with how unrepresentative that session is it’s hard to believe that would be the reason for him being off the pace.

Best Sector Times of FP2 by Driver

Comparing Piastri’s fastest sector times of the session to those he put together to form his fastest overall lap indicates that he left 0.129s on the table from his actual to ‘ideal’ lap – 0.030s of which came in sector 1 and 0.099s in sector 3.

Top Speed vs. Downforce Priority – The Sector Differences

The sector times also point to where the setups of the MCL39 versus the RB21 in Norris and Verstappen’s hands differ. Norris was strongest in sector one and three, while Verstappen had the upper hand in the top speed reliant sector two.

The telemetry, and specifically the delta between the pair as the laps unfolded, shows how Verstappen was losing out to Norris in every braking zone, sometimes in the region of over 0.75s which is not insignificant. Interestingly though, Verstappen does look to lift off the throttle before reaching the turn five braking zone, where he lost 0.5s alone, so there’ll be more to come from him through there in qualifying.

However as the short sector one ends and they head into the first long straight out of turn five, Verstappen claws back much of the time he’d lost as a result of that by reaching a top speed 4km/h higher than Norris.

It’s a pattern that repeats again into turn nine, the corner that follows the second long straight of the lap – Verstappen’s peak speed is approximately 4km/h higher again.

But into sector three, the tighter, twistier part of the lap, it’s Norris who ekes out an advantage slowly and steadily. The advantage of his higher downforce setups is particularly obvious in the flowing triple right hander of turns ten to twelve, but then also again with the traction out of fourteen which sets up his run around the final two corners more strongly than we see for Verstappen.

It all points to the McLaren running a setup with a higher level of downforce than the Red Bull to presumably prioritise the high speed cornering in sector one and the tighter corners, plus tyre life, by sector three. Red Bull, on the other hand, have opted to put an emphasis on straight line speed which could prove valuable for either fighting through the field come Sunday, or holding position.

While rear wings aren’t everything in terms of determining a downforce level a team has opted for, they can give a good clue, and the more v-shaped wing chosen by McLaren supports that, compared to the flatter plane chosen by Red Bull.

Long Run Pace

Moving to look at long race pace is where the strategic differences between the teams and their run plans becomes apparent, even at this early stage of the weekend.

All three title contenders completed higher fuel runs on the medium tyre of varying length, with Piastri at the lowest end on 6, Norris in the middle on 8 laps, and Verstappen running 15 laps consecutively. Pace-wise, the trio were split by 0.471s with Norris leading Verstappen, and Piastri 0.064s away from the Red Bull.

That run plan strategy does mark something of a shift for Red Bull versus how they typically run their second practice sessions, as this level of focus on longer, higher fuel running is perhaps not what we usually see. Gianpiero Lambiase, Max Verstappen’s race engineer but also Head of Racing at the team, spoke to their reasoning for this in the team’s Friday debrief, saying it had given them “a bit more data heading into Sunday.”

“I think that has been proven useful as the tyres were a little bit more vulnerable compared to what we were perhaps expecting,” he explained.

“It looks like front right graining is a problem for the field, so we need to analyse how we improve the longevity of this tyre heading into Sunday.”

He also raised the question of the teams straying from the straightforward one-stop this race had been for much of the field last year, with degradation potentially fuelling the need for a second stop which can prove risky for front runners who can emerge in traffic.

With those question marks hanging over the tyre behaviour, extending Verstappen’s stint could have been wise and could have allowed them a further insight into how that pace develops as the laps tick down. As Lambiase pointed to, the data does indicate a steady pace drop off for the medium beyond lap nine for Verstappen.

If that does prove to be the case come Sunday, the way McLaren have treated their tyre allocation thus far compared to Red Bull could make things interesting (provided things don’t even out come FP3’s running).

As Pirelli’s chief engineer, Simone Berra, highlighted following Friday’s running, “it’s not by chance that both McLarens…did not run the hard at all in FP2, saving a new set.”

“An extra set of hard C3 tyres during the race gives more options in terms of strategy, especially if there’s a safety car, and delivers performance very similar to the medium C4.”

“The performance gap between the C3 and C4 is currently around two tenths of a second, while there’s a bigger gap between medium and soft of about seven to eight tenths of a second,” he explained.

The track evolution from here until the grand prix, which is typically fairly high given the support series present at this event but also the dust and dirt that clean up as the running adds up, could play to Red Bull’s strategic favour in holding an extra set of mediums versus the hards of McLaren. Should it rubber in, bringing up the grip and reducing the graining and degradation that feeds into, the medium could yet offer a lap time and grip advantage.

Where does this leave us?

The overall picture is one of there still being pace to find from all three drivers, but particularly Piastri. None of the title contenders were overly pleased with their Friday running, at least publicly, perhaps to maintain the way they are aiming to treat this weekend like any other.

Although Norris came out of the representative session quickest, even he felt “there’s still a little bit more to find in the car” and so said there’s “nothing to smile about yet, as we know it gets closer as the weekend goes on, but a good starting point.”

Piastri similarly felt there were just a “few tweaks to find overnight” despite the laptime rift between him and his teammate.

And it’s a similar story again for Verstappen, who concluded that “we probably just need to be a little bit faster” despite them being “in a decent window”.