Kimi Antonelli Dominates Second Practice at Spanish Grand Prix
Kimi Antonelli stamped his authority on a sweltering Friday in Madrid, topping second practice for the Spanish Grand Prix and edging Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc around the unforgiving Madring circuit.
The championship leader put Mercedes on top with a 1m33.662s midway through the hour, a lap that survived a late red flag and a flurry of soft-tyre runs to stand as the benchmark on a day when the track bit back as often as it rewarded.
Antonelli tames a brutal new test
The 5.4km Madring layout is no gentle warm-up. It splices tight, concrete-lined street sections with a fast, purpose-built loop, and offers almost no runoff. Drivers tiptoe at first, then test the limits. On Friday, those limits came at a price.
Teams treated FP1 with kid gloves, prioritising mileage and muscle memory over lap time. By FP2, the training wheels started to come off. Grip improved, confidence grew, but the stopwatch didn’t tumble in quite the way engineers had hoped. The circuit stayed stubborn.
Antonelli set the early tone on mediums with a 1m34.428s, before Max Verstappen briefly knocked him off top spot as the field wrestled their cars through the narrow, concrete corridors and tried to find clear air in traffic.
Turn 17 quickly emerged as a trouble spot. The right-hander caught out several drivers, who drifted wide on exit and picked up track-limits offences. Nobody looked fully comfortable.
Then Antonelli hit back. A 1m33.926s put him back in front, with FP1 pacesetter and team-mate George Russell tucked within a tenth, Mercedes looking sharp as the track rubbered in.
Softs, a red flag, and a statement lap
The session truly lit up around halfway. Most of the field bolted on the softs, the quickest compound on paper but a nightmare to keep in the right window as the Madring’s long, loaded corners shredded Pirelli’s tyres.
Under that pressure, Antonelli delivered again. His 1m33.662s lap set the bar and stayed there. Russell couldn’t immediately respond. Ferrari did.
Lewis Hamilton and Leclerc slotted into second and third, Ferrari showing strong one-lap pace with both cars. Racing Bulls rookie Arvid Lindblad produced one of the laps of the day to go fourth, an eye-catching effort in just 15 laps of running.
Then it all unravelled for him.
Lindblad lost the rear at Turn 13, a medium-speed left-hander, and slid into the barriers. He climbed out unhurt, but his session was over and the red flags flew with 25 minutes left as marshals repaired the TecPro barriers he’d rearranged.
The interruption killed the momentum at the front. With time lost and tyres past their best, nobody could threaten Antonelli’s time when the session resumed. The order at the top froze: Antonelli from Leclerc, Hamilton, Lindblad, Russell and Verstappen.
Behind them, Oscar Piastri salvaged seventh for McLaren on a bruising day for the reigning world champions.
McLaren hit trouble, Norris sidelined
Piastri at least logged 24 laps and a 1m34.200s, but the bigger story at McLaren sat in the garage. Lando Norris managed only two laps before a transmission issue forced the team into a gearbox change and ended his session almost before it began.
For a driver fighting at the sharp end of the championship, that lack of running around a complex new venue is a serious blow heading into Saturday.
Mixed fortunes through the field
Yuki Tsunoda, making just his third appearance of the season as Isack Hadjar continues his recovery from a wrist injury, put his Racing Bulls machine eighth, underlining the car’s pace after Lindblad’s earlier heroics.
Esteban Ocon delivered a solid ninth for Haas, ahead of Liam Lawson in the second Red Bull, who rounded out the top 10.
Pierre Gasly led the midfield chase in 11th for Alpine, followed by Nico Hülkenberg and Gabriel Bortoleto in the two Audis. Oliver Bearman’s Haas slotted into 14th, with Franco Colapinto 15th in the second Alpine.
For the home crowd, the timesheets made grim reading. Carlos Sainz finished only 16th in the Williams, with Fernando Alonso 17th after Aston Martin spent the early part of the session fixing a clutch issue that delayed his run plan.
Alex Albon’s Williams ended up 18th, while Sergio Perez endured a low-key session in the Cadillac F1 Team car, down in 19th. Lance Stroll was 20th in the second Aston Martin, ahead of Valtteri Bottas in the other Cadillac.
Norris, with no representative lap, propped up the times in 22nd.
A narrow margin, a clear warning
The gaps at the front were tight. Leclerc trailed Antonelli by just 0.113s, Hamilton another 0.036s back. Lindblad, before his crash, sat 0.228s off the top. Russell and Verstappen, in fifth and sixth, were within four tenths of the benchmark.
On paper, that promises a fight. On track, the Madring promises something else: punishment for the slightest mistake.
Antonelli walked away from Friday with the fastest lap and the confidence that comes with it. The rest of the field now has one evening to decode a brutal new circuit, tame the soft tyres, and find a way to knock the Mercedes man off his perch when it really counts.
