Oscar Piastri ended Friday at the Bahrain Grand Prix with the fastest time as he and McLaren Formula 1 team-mate Lando Norris set an ominous pace in second practice.
Leading positions
1 Norris
2 Piastri
3 Russell
Full results at bottom of page
Piastri's best lap of 1m30.505s - which was actually marginally slower than the best time from last year's corresponding session, a 1m30.374s - gave him a 0.154-second advantage over Norris, who asked his McLaren team for a change of helmet and HANS device and to clean his headrest early in the session.
But at a track McLaren's rivals have been concerned would suit its MCL39 car's strengths better than any other so far in 2025, the gap to the rest was stark.
George Russell got closest on his qualifying simulation run, setting a 1m31.032s that was 0.527s slower than Piastri's best.
Charles Leclerc gave Ferrari some cause for optimism by improving to fourth, a mere 0.013s behind Russell, but that lap carries the caveat that it was set with just over 20 minutes of the hour-long session remaining - with the three faster times all set more than 10 minutes earlier.
That late Leclerc improvement - he'd been 10th prior to that - meant he ended up splitting the Mercedes cars, with rookie Kimi Antonelli fifth at the head of a tighter pack.
Isack Hadjar was sixth and once again the clear midfield standout; his laptime, set on mediums, was 0.011s slower than Antonelli's and more than three tenths faster than the next 'Class B' car, Ollie Bearman's ninth-fastest Haas.
Hadjar was faster too than the senior Red Bull team's Max Verstappen, who was seventh and eight tenths slower than the McLarens he beat to victory in Japan last weekend.
The four-time F1 champion made comments during FP2 about poor ride - "the car is jumping a lot" - and his RB21's braking into the final corner in particular, but it is likely that the Red Bull's single-lap deficit was exaggerated.
That was supported by F1's track dominance graphic showing Verstappen's time loss to Hadjar was almost exclusively in the Sakhir layout's plentiful straight sections - indicating Red Bull was running a lower engine mode.
Lewis Hamilton was eighth in the second Ferrari but more than a second off the pace, with Carlos Sainz beating Williams team-mate Alex Albon to the final spot in the top 10 behind Bearman. Sainz was 0.073s faster than Albon.
Jack Doohan was 14th, a tenth and a half faster and three places better off compared to team-mate Pierre Gasly - who was second in FP1.
Gasly was marginally faster than the second Red Bull of Yuki Tsunoda, who backed out of his first qualifying simulation on softs but was still a disappointing 1.519s off on his second run.
Aston Martin had a difficult session; Fernando Alonso was sidelined for almost all of the first half of FP2 by a steering issue, one that manifested while he was out on track.
Alonso did return in the second half of the session after a change of steering column and put in two timed efforts to end up with the 15th-fastest time, with Lance Stroll half a second further back in 19th.
Results
1 Oscar Piastri (McLaren), 1m30.505s
2 Lando Norris (McLaren), +0.154s
3 George Russell (Mercedes), +0.527s
4 Charles Leclerc (Ferrari), +0.540s
5 Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes), +0.722s
6 Isack Hadjar (Racing Bulls), +0.733s
7 Max Verstappen (Red Bull), +0.825s
8 Lewis Hamilton (Ferrari), +1.071s
9 Ollie Bearman (Haas), +1.079s
10 Carlos Sainz (Williams), +1.118s
11 Alex Albon (Williams), +1.191s
12 Liam Lawson (Racing Bulls), +1.201s
13 Gabriel Bortoleto (Sauber), +1.267s
14 Jack Doohan (Alpine), +1.283s
15 Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin), +1.320s
16 Esteban Ocon (Haas), +1.365s
17 Pierre Gasly (Alpine), +1.442s
18 Yuki Tsunoda (Red Bull), +1.519s
19 Lance Stroll (Aston Martin), +1.877s
20 Nico Hulkenberg (Sauber), +1.991s
