Hamilton leads Bottas in closer Spanish FP2

Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas once again set the pace in second practice for the Spanish Grand Prix, with the two Mercedes drivers just 0.09s apart in a close session.

In a repeat of the first session, the Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull drivers locked out the top six with Hamilton leading Bottas, while Raikkonen and Verstappen again beat their respective teammates. Hamilton's advantage was just 0.029s in FP1 and grew to nearly 0.1s in the afternoon session courtesy of a 1:20.802, with the soft tire laps already over a second faster than last year's pole position time.

Hamilton ran wide early on at Turn 13 but generally looked a little happier with his car as Bottas complained of inconsistency with his rear wing following a trip across the gravel at Turn 7 late on. Bottas was then followed by Vettel as the German had to catch a slide at Turn 4, blaming "a huge gust" of wind for unsettling the car and forcing him to run through the gravel before rejoining.

With the gap between the top two teams being nearly a second in FP1, the afternoon's running was much more competitive as Raikkonen was just 0.3s adrift of Hamilton in third place and Vettel 0.1s further back. The updated Red Bull RB13 was also closer to the front than in recent weeks, with Max Verstappen 0.636s off Hamilton's best lap during the soft tire qualifying simulations.

Despite again edging out teammate Daniel Ricciardo, Verstappen had the most dramatic off-track moment of all as he almost spun exiting the high-speed Turn 9. Catching the rear of his car, Verstappen was forced to take to the gravel on the exit of the corner and lost a few laps of running while his car was checked.

Renault showed more impressive one lap pace at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, with Nico Hulkenberg seventh ahead of teammate Jolyon Palmer. With a best lap of 1:21.687, Hulkenberg was a little under 0.9s slower than Hamilton but also just 0.1s adrift of Ricciardo in the similarly Renault-powered Red Bull.

After a disastrous morning session that saw Fernando Alonso complete just two turns before an oil leak stopped him, Honda completed a rapid power unit change and managed to get the Spaniard back out within the opening half hour of FP2. Alonso made up for some of the lost time with 21 laps, but was slowest of all 20 runners and some half a second adrift of Pascal Wehrlein ahead of him.

There was a more encouraging session for Alonso's teammate Stoffel Vandoorne as the Belgian once again finished 13th quickest, 1.8s slower than Hamilton and just 0.4s adrift of Carlos Sainz in the top ten. While reliability remains a concern, both McLaren drivers have received small performance updates from Honda this weekend.

Sainz was a quarter of a second slower than Felipe Massa, with the Brazilian some 1.2s clear of his teammate Lance Stroll in the second Williams. However, Stroll's fastest lap was compromised by an error at Turn 8, with the 18-year-old running wide after taking too much curb and having to abort his attempt.

In a largely incident-free second session, there was a brief red flag late on when a piece of debris flew off a Toro Rosso at the exit of Turn 9 and came to rest in the middle of the track. With the bodywork close to the racing line, running was briefly suspended to allow marshals to remove it.