Russell and Mercedes top Saturday morning Imola F1 practice

Mercedes driver George Russell was a surprise pacesetter in final practice for Formula 1’s Emilia Romagna Grand Prix ahead of the first sprint race of the 2022 season.

Key moments

• Russell beats Perez to best time
• Three different cars in top three
• Major problems for McLaren; three laps for Norris, none for Ricciardo
• Bottas also misses all of session

Russell’s best time of 1m19.457s was still more than six tenths shy of the best time from Friday’s qualifying, a 1m18.793s set by Max Verstappen in Q2, as teams focused on testing the longevity of the soft compound tyre ahead of the 21-lap sprint race.

Red Bull driver Sergio Perez did a meaningful 18-lap run on the softs at speed, while Zhou Guanyu completed a full sprint race distance on the same compound for Alfa Romeo.

Perez later swapped to mediums and improved to second fastest, 0.081 seconds behind Russell, with championship leader Charles Leclerc two tenths further back for Ferrari, making it three different cars in the top three.

Lewis Hamilton was fourth in the second Mercedes – half a second down on his team-mate Russell – ahead of Fernando Alonso (Alpine), Carlos Sainz (Ferrari) and Verstappen.

The top 10 was completed by The AlphaTauris of Yuki Tsunoda and Pierre Gasly, who were both eliminated in Q1 on Friday, and Zhou.

Zhou was the only Alfa Romeo to take part in the session, with Valtteri Bottas missing the entirety of the hour-long session as a legacy of his problem in Q3 that caused a red flag.

The resulting exhaust damage meant Bottas’s car had to be rebuilt around the spare tub, which didn’t have the suspension attachments on.

Alfa was not the only team in trouble in FP2 though, as McLaren experienced problems with both its cars.

It declared before the start of the session only that it was “investigating an issue” on Ricciardo’s car, which recorded no laps, while Lando Norris – who will start the sprint race from third – lost the majority of the session to a brake issue.

He managed only three laps before the problem was diagnosed, but was able to return to the track in the final minutes to complete a further three laps

Practice 2 Results