Formula 1

All that happened in second Madring F1 practice

Jack Benyon

11 Sep 2026 — 3 min read

Championship leader Kimi Antonelli topped the times in Madring's second practice session as the first red flag of the Spanish Grand Prix weekend was triggered by the star of the session up until that point.

The Madring circuit had been labelled a car killer in the run-up to the event, and drivers were on best behaviour with no incidents in FP1. Unfortunately, there was a red flag in FP2 as just under 15 minutes of the session was lost.

Lindblad repeatedly put his Racing Bulls up in the top five in the early running and was fourth when he lost the rear really early trying to enter Turn 13, the slow left-hander after the banked La Monumental corner, with 25 minutes remaining in the session.

Lindblad reported he was OK, and apologised to the team. At the time, the next 'midfield' car was Esteban Ocon's Haas in eighth, 0.977s behind!

After Lindblad's shunt, just over 12 minutes remained in the session, which meant the overall times from before stood with very few improvements in the top 10 after it.

While George Russell topped FP1, it was points leader Kimi Antonelli appeared to be a step ahead in FP2 and repeatedly topped the order as teams experimented with tyres and set-up.

In fact, Russell emerged from the red flag on mediums, which basically consigned him to his pre-red flag fifth. He had struggled to pull together his equivalent soft fast lap to Antonelli, lacking even a personal best first sector on his best lap.

Instead, the Ferraris challenged Antonelli with Leclerc 0.113s behind the benchmark and just ahead of Lewis Hamilton, who struggled with his front end earlier in the session, narrowly avoiding the wall at the Turn 17 exit.

Behind Lindblad and Russell, Max Verstappen led Oscar Piastri, both the highest-placed drivers in their respective teams, while Yuki Tsunoda improved to beat Ocon and set the second-best time of the midfield in eighth.

Verstappen's team-mate Lawson rounded out the top 10, complaining of a lack of rear-end grip and losing time to hitting the wall, ahead of Ocon.

Piastri's team-mate Lando Norris did not have a great session.

Norris only managed two laps on track, neither at speed, after gearbox issues where he had found a false neutral. There was a lot of work going on at the back of the car throughout the session, but the time lost will be even more crucial than normal, where track time is at a premium on what is a new track.

Fernando Alonso was another driver in trouble with pre-session clutch issues, but he did get out on track to set the 17th-best time, splitting the Williams.