Mercedes' strength comes to the front: FP2 Race Pace Analysis
A lot may have changed this year, but what hasn't is Mercedes' doing their signature long race runs in FP2, and it's left them looking strong...
The Data
Long Run Lap Times
Long Runs with Delta to Quickest
Mercedes lead the way
They may have had a “difficult start” to their weekend in FP1, as Kimi Antonelli said, with them struggling to get to grips with battery deployment - leaving little room for setup work. But come FP2, and Mercedes didn’t forgo their signature long, consistent race runs.
Together, they completed a combined 23 laps on the hard tyre with Russell’s pace just shy of half a second clear of Antonelli’s. Remarkably, they were consistent lap-to-lap over these runs too, with very little variation from their slowest to quickest times which is something they’d struggled with achieving via consistent energy management and deployment over testing.
The team aren’t getting ahead of themselves though with Andrew Shovlin simply saying the long runs were “decent” and Russell maintaining that “the front of the field looks very competitive”.
But getting a true measure of that competition over longer stints at this stage is complicated by the fact that, aside from Mercedes, the runs by the other top four teams were varied in length, compound use and pace.
Lando Norris did complete some back-to-back laps on the soft tyre, only five of which were in the pace margin for a longer run - albeit still relatively inconsistently. It leaves him splitting the Mercedes pair here, but perhaps not with the most representative showing. Piastri had a similar run plan for his longer stint, again doing it on the soft tyre, but with five much more consistent laps. It leaves him 1.135s off Russell’s pace.
Hamilton was the sole Ferrari to log any sort of longer running worth measuring over the second practice session, but even he did just 5 laps on the hard tyre with average pace that leaves him ranking fifth quickest, yet still 0.698s away from the benchmark.
Around three tenths back for average lap time from Hamilton, with a run of 7 laps on the medium C4 tyre, was Isack Hadjar as the only representation of Red Bull’s longer run pace in the absence of one from Verstappen.
Overall, it leaves us with a picture of the top four teams being separated by 1.1s, although we have to consider the individual differences between the runs and their ‘quality’.
Audi lead the midfield?
The Audi marque’s first day of running at a grand prix weekend was “positive” according to Gabriel Bortoleto, with Nico Hulkenberg, the quicker of the two over their long runs, calling it a “decent first Friday of the season”
He logged 8 laps on the medium tyre with an average lap time of 1:25.509s - within 6 tenths of the front runners, and over 3 tenths clear of his closest midfield rival in Lawson.
Making such comparisons over the midfield versus doing the same between the front runners is simplified by the fact that Hulkenberg, Lawson, Colapinto and Bortoleto all completed their runs on the C4 compound and, with the exception of Bortoleto, completed runs of 7-10 laps.
In fact, there was very little separating Lawson and Colapinto for pace - indicating perhaps that Alpine have made the step up they were hoping for by switching to Mercedes power, but also switching their focus to 2026 early last year.
More widely though, they sit nestled in a group split again by very little even when Lindblad’s 10 laps on the soft, C5 are included. He ran to an average pace just 0.139s slower than his teammate on the medium, with little to no lap time drop-off over the stint - a potentially promising sign for the C5’s use in the Grand Prix, even with the increased loads running over the rear axle under these regulations. That is also supported by Pirelli’s chief engineer, Simone Berra’s, comments: “degradation appears limited and perfectly manageable for the drivers”.
Sitting at the back of the midfield at this point, yet likely to get amongst it when the compound use evens out, are the Haas pair of Bearman and Ocon. Their average lap times were between ~0.9 and 1.0 seconds away from Hulkenberg’s midfield benchmark, but we can assume that at least 0.5s of that, based on Pirelli’s estimates, is due to the difference between the medium and hard compounds.
At the very back of the field, and understandably so in their debut weekend in Formula 1, is the Cadillac of Bottas. He ran for 10 laps on the medium tyre, with average pace 5.029s off Russell’s at the front of the field. The lap times were also quite inconsistent within his stint, fluctuating from the 1:27s to the 1:30s.
Their day was called “hectic” by their team principal, Graeme Lowdon, as it was their first fielding two cars at once and he’s maintaining an awareness of the fact that this first race is not the end point, but “the first step in a long way”.
What we don’t know after a first day of running is where Williams or Aston Martin sit comparatively for long run pace, as neither driver from neither team did a stint in FP2. Aston Martin’s day on the whole was limited by the vibration issue they’ve suffered, while Williams “have some work to do” according to Albon.
Intrigued to see Audi coming so strong! It didn't feel like they knocked it out the park during testing, so great to see them doing so well on day 1.