Fernando Alonso tops rainy Canadian GP practice with Verstappen and Leclerc in FP2 trouble
Fernando Alonso and home Lance Stroll made it an Aston Martin 1-3 in FP2 at the 2024 Canadian Grand Prix, in a session where data about the crossover point from intermediate to dry tyres was more important than the headline times.
Alonso was half a second ahead of George Russell with Stroll another couple of tenths back and only three more drivers finished within a second of the flying Spaniard.
The session started until drizzling conditions but conditions worsened around halfway through and despite plenty of intermediate running, the track Circuit Gilles Villeneuve never dried out enough for anyone to better Alonso‘s time.
Max Verstappen was forced to cut his session in half though due to a fire on his Red Bull reportedly due to a problem with the RB20’s ERS system, with teammate Sergio Perez finishing tenth.
Charles Leclerc – who had trouble of his own early on – was fourth with Daniel Ricciardo and Kevin Magnussen next up at 0.921 and 0.963 seconds back – the Dane had possibly the biggest off of the session at the turn 3-4 chicane, splashing through the waterlogged grass.
Neither Mercedes ran their new front wing, worried about crashing and destroying the delicate load, and Lewis Hamilton was seventh ahead of Yuki Tsunoda – completing a positive Friday for RB – and Alex Albon
Verstappen in hot water, is Leclerc?
Verstappen missed the second half of the session thanks to the fire, but only actually sacrificed a handful of laps on track as the rain closed on the Ile de Notre Dame soon afterwards.
Red Bull are investigating the incident, and the stewards are looking into Leclerc for apparently taking to track on intermediates before the circuit was declared wet by race control.
That wasn’t Leclerc‘s only trouble though. He was on the end of several frustrated radio messages including from former Ferrari man Alonso who complained Leclerc wasn’t checking his mirrors like a ‘typical Ferrari’.