Lando Norris headed McLaren team-mate and title rival Oscar Piastri in the second Formula 1 practice session of the 2025 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix weekend.
The session effectively ended a few minutes early due to a red flag for Red Bull's Yuki Tsunoda crashing out at the final corner after brushing the inside wall with his left front, as the contact instantly snapped the suspension and pushed him into the outside wall.
Nooo! Yuki Tsunoda is into the wall and the red flag is deployed 🚩
— Formula 1 (@F1) April 18, 2025
The Red Bull driver is OK#F1 #SaudiArabianGP pic.twitter.com/K6uChMFWOE
That red flag was lifted with one minute to go, leaving drivers no time to do any more flying laps but at least allowing for practice starts.
Several drivers, including Piastri, reported striking a wall at some point during the session, though none had it lead to consequences nearly as severe as for Tsunoda.
The second-biggest incident of the session was a sudden spin for Lance Stroll under braking into Turn 1, but the Aston Martin avoided any damage and got going again from the run-off.
Just over a tenth and a half (0.163s specifically) separated Norris and Piastri at the top of the classification, with their nearest rival - Max Verstappen in the non-crashed Red Bull - a further tenth back, in what was by default the most representative practice session at Jeddah (taking place in the evening time under the lights like qualifying and the race, while FP1 and FP2 are daytime sessions).
Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc led the way after the initial runs - which the top cars carried out on medium rubber - but he was flattered by Norris failing to complete his fastest lap. And both McLarens jumped well clear as the soft-tyre qualifying simulations began, with Norris initially 0.09s ahead of Piastri.
He then pulled further clear by improving on a used tyre - albeit that lap appeared to feature a very blatant Turn 1 corner cut (which nonetheless didn't account for the laptime gain).
Leclerc ended up fourth behind Verstappen, though his soft-tyre laptime was stymied by the fact it took him several attempts to string the lap together - by which the best of the rubber was presumably gone.
Carlos Sainz ended one of his better days in the Williams in fifth, narrowly ahead of Tsunoda - who'd lapped four tenths off Verstappen before his crash during race simulations.
"I just turned in too much," Tsunoda told F1TV.
"Apologies to the team, pace was looking good. A shame."
Lewis Hamilton in the second Ferrari was six tenths back from team-mate Leclerc, and was also subject to a post-session investigation for impeding Alex Albon - in an incident the Williams driver described as "dangerous" due to the speed disparity.
The stewards acknowledged Albon was impeded but said that in practice "as agreed with the teams" this doesn't warrant a penalty. And they wrote of Albon: "While his immediate reaction when the incident occurred was to say that it was dangerous, having looked at it subsequently, he agreed that it was not."
The Tsunoda crash meant long run data from the session ended up extremely limited, with Verstappen doing the longest stint among the frontrunners but also being distinctly slower lap-on-lap than Piastri in the McLaren.
There were only 19 drivers taking part in the session. Sauber rookie Gabriel Bortoleto is set to go into qualifying and the race at a mileage deficit, due to a fuel leak that was discovered after first practice and kept him out for the entirety of FP2.
FP2 results
1 Lando Norris (McLaren) 1m28.267s
2 Oscar Piastri (McLaren) +0.163s
3 Max Verstappen (Red Bull) +0.280s
4 Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) +0.482s
5 Carlos Sainz (Williams) +0.675s
6 Yuki Tsunoda (Red Bull) +0.696s
7 George Russell (Mercedes) +0.706s
8 Pierre Gasly (Alpine) +0.839s
9 Nico Hulkenberg (Sauber) +0.926s
10 Alex Albon (Williams) +0.953s
11 Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes) +0.975s
12 Isack Hadjar (Racing Bulls) +1.039s
13 Lewis Hamilton (Ferrari) +1.104s
14 Liam Lawson (Racing Bulls) +1.221s
15 Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin) +1.395s
16 Ollie Bearman (Haas) +1.487s
17 Jack Doohan (Alpine) +1.645s
18 Lance Stroll (Aston Martin) +1.740s
19 Esteban Ocon (Haas) +1.752s
20 Gabriel Bortoleto (Sauber) No time
