Practice 2: A Step In The Wrong Direction

By Sam Cooper
July 2 2007

The team, having lost a lot of critical running time, from Lewis Hamilton’s unexpected reliability problem, would have been looking to maximise the remaining practice time which is available to the teams. From McLaren’s practice times, it would seem the team went the wrong way in the MP4-22’s setup, for the upcoming French Grand Prix, at Mangy Cours.

The session was cold but dry, despite the threat of rain from the looming cloud cover, the session was moderately eventful, with Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso testing their cars, and themselves to the limit, the two championship contenders running off the track during the one and a half hour session.

Vitantonio Liuzzi surprised many in the second session, the Torro Rosso driver ending the session 5th, leaving many people to believe that the former Minardi team, have made some updates to the STR2. Could this mean more points for Torro Rosso? His team mate Scott Speed went two better, and finished the session a terrific third. Rather surprisingly Felipe Massa and Ferrari were on top in the 2nd session, with Ferrari team mate Kimi Räikkönen in second.

Current championship leader Lewis Hamilton was looking rather unimpressive in the second session, showing the world that both drivers weren’t completely happily with the handling of their car. The young Britain managing to grab 4th place as the session closed.

Lewis’s Spanish team mate Fernando Alonso, wasn’t having the best of times, the reigning double reigning world champion ended the session in a lowly 8th position, just behind Nico Rosberg in the Williams Toyota.

Times will be shown below.