Verstappen tops closely fought second practice

F1 Grand Prix, GP Azerbaijan, Baku Street Circuit

The margins were extremely close among the three top teams in today's second practice session at Baku, Azerbaijan. Max Verstappen was fastest overall, but only by a tenth over Mercedes driver Valtteri Bottas and the second Red Bull of Daniel Ricciardo.

As in the first practice session, grip levels remained low, despite F2 having run on the circuit today as well. This resulted in many off-track excursions yet again, resulting in numerous yellow flags during the session. Renault driver Jolyon Palmer caused a 9-minute red flag period as well as he had a crash similar to Perez' crash during FP1.

Having cut over the curbs a little too hard, he ended up hitting the wall with his right hand side front wheel, followed by the rest of the car scraping against the wall on the right hand side of the track.

At the very end of the session, Max Verstappen also damaged his car as he went backwards into the barriers at Turn 1.