Russell quickest from Piastri in FP2

Mercedes’ George Russell led McLaren driver Oscar Piastri in a crash-interrupted FP2 for the Dutch GP, with home hero Max Verstappen down in fifth.

Lewis Hamilton and Lando Norris finished in third and fourth, while the other Red Bull driver, Sergio Perez, did not break into the top 10 and Ferrari suffered a reliability scare for Carlos Sainz.

In marked contrast to the wet and wild conditions that kicked off FP1, clear blue skies greeted the pack for the day’s second one-hour session, where Alpine’s Pierre Gasly led the pack out of the pits.

All the early running was done on the medium or hard tyres, with Verstappen’s opening 1m12.131s on the mediums staying as the benchmark for the first quarter, during which many drivers locked up at Tarzan where a strong tailwind was making things tricky.

Shortly after he had pitted from a second run on a new set of mediums following a near dramatic off at Scheivlak, Hamilton forged ahead on a 1m11.833s.

The session was then suspended when Nico Hulkenberg spun off backwards at Tarzan – the rear wheels of his Haas locking suddenly as he braked and sending him to an accident that crumped the right-hand side of the German’s car.

The wreckage was removed during a subsequent six-minute delay, after which Verstappen reappeared for an early qualifying simulation effort on the softs.

He duly took back the top time with a 1m10.986s despite a lap where the home hero’s RB20 looked skittish throughout, but with Norris having also gone for a swift switch to the softs post-restart, the McLaren driver then nipped ahead on a 1m10.961s.

A few minutes later, Piastri demoted his team-mate to second with a 1m10.763s, before Russell took over with a 1m10.702s – despite running hard over the exit kerbs at the final corner.

Hamilton then slotted into third 0.111s down on the leading Mercedes, before Charles Leclerc completed Ferrari’s sole soft-tyre run of the day on the far side of the session’s halfway point.

This was only good enough for ninth behind Fernando Alonso, who ended up trailing Verstappen once the Dutchman had been shuffled back, Yuki Tsunoda and Kevin Magnussen.

Alex Albon rounded out the top 10 for Williams, followed by Lance Stroll and Perez in the second Aston Martin and Red Bull cars respectively.

After this, the field rapidly switched to long-run data gathering, with the weather forecast for the rest of the weekend mixed on Saturday and drier on Sunday – the wind in particular likely to be much less strong come race day – therefore placing a premium on understanding tyre degradation even more than is typically the case in an FP2 session.

Ferrari did not get any further lower fuel look on the softs other than Leclerc’s mid-session effort, as Sainz had exited from proceedings after the early laps due to a suspected gearbox issue aboard his SF-24.

Two incidents of likely pitstop unsafe releases – involving Zhou Guanyu and Daniel Ricciardo, and Albon and Stroll – will be investigated post-session.