Kimi Antonelli tops practice two in Brazil. Several drivers struggled with the bump heading into turn one with the likes of the 2026 world champion amongst them. There were early concerns of rain in FP2, but aside from mist the track remained dry.
Hülkenberg Loses Valuable Track Time
In FP1 it was Freddie Slater who would take over the 27 car. Slater managed few laps for his rookie session before a mechanical failure prevented him from going any further. The Brit only completed 12 minutes of the session.
The car issues didn’t end there as Nico Hülkenberg failed to make it out at all for FP2. His Friday track time in Brazil would ultimately be non-existent. The Audi team attempted to find the issue between the sessions, even building it back up ahead of the second one. The Audi R26 then refused to power up ahead of FP2. The issue left the garage scrambling to determine where exactly it was coming from, with the car being stripped down during valuable track time. The Audi driver will hope the electronics issue is fixed ahead of tomorrow.
Antonelli Shows Ominous Pace
The reigning world champion looked to be in the rhythm in the final practice of the day in Brazil. Antonelli popped up into P1 on the soft tyre runs over two tenths clear of second place Lando Norris. The man who topped FP1 sat a little further back from Antonelli but showed that McLaren’s four upgrades were working. The Woking based team are the only ones on the grid to bring updates at this point to their 2026 car, hoping to take back the third place in the constructors. Max Verstappen sat six thousandths behind Norris. The four-time world champion didn’t seem too happy with his Red Bull Ford PU. He went on to finish the session with six minutes remaining. The team working on his floor whilst everyone else did practice starts.
Several drivers failed to not get caught out by the bump into turn one. Liam Lawson, Fernando Alonso, Alex Albon, Ollie Bearman, and George Russell were the ones to do so. Russell will want to find more comfortability especially with his five-place grid penalty for qualifying.
Rafael Câmara will hope to not get a penalty ahead of qualifying after a close call with Charles Leclerc. The rookie making his debut this weekend, failed to move off the racing line out of the last corner. The Ferrari doing its soft run frustratingly had to go further on to the green area off track than he would’ve liked. Leclerc will also hope that on his qualifying lap tomorrow here in Brazil, no such thing will take place.