Sainz crashed hard in second practice! Red flags in Abu Dhabi, Hülkenberg also hit the wall

The second free practice for the last race of this season, the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, is over. Charles Leclerc was the winner, but the drivers didn’t do much. FP2 was affected by red flags after accidents to Carlos Sainz and Nico Hülkenberg.

Free practice in Abu Dhabi is over

Friday’s action from Abu Dhabi is over, but in any case, it didn’t offer any relevant insights towards the rest of the race weekend.

In the opening practice, the teams fielded mainly rookies, so ten new names appeared in the starting field. However, we have already covered the first free practice, which was won by George Russell, in more detail in our previous article.

It was the second practice that was to be the most representative of the three, as the track conditions were the same as those that would prevail in the race. But the opposite was true.

After just eight minutes, FP1 was abandoned due to Carlos Sainz’s heavy crash. He hit a bump, the car spun and Sainz subsequently hit the barrier hard. The race directors understandably resorted to red flags and the suspension of the second practice session.

You can watch Sainz’s crash in the video below. Needless to say, this is a major inconvenience for Ferrari and a second expensive weekend in a row.

Sainz wasn’t the only one, Hülkenberg also crashed

Twenty-seven minutes later, the drivers finally returned to the track. But it didn’t take long, two minutes to be precise, and FP2 was suspended again. This time it was Nico Hülkenberg who hit the wall on the exit of Turn 1.

This time, the car was only cleaned up for seven minutes, but there were only 16 minutes left of practice. The impatient Max Verstappen was therefore quite aggressive, even overtaking his other rivals right in the tunnel at the exit of the pits.

The winner of the second practice session was Charles Leclerc, Sainz’s teammate. The Monegasque Ferrari driver set a time of 1:24.809. Just 41 thousandths of a second behind him was McLaren driver Lando Norris.

However, the results from the second practice session are certainly not representative, precisely because of the two accidents and red flags that significantly affected the course of FP2.

Source: F1, Twitter / X