Lewis Hamilton heads Red Bull pair in FP2

The championship leader set a best time of 1:23.949 to head Daniil Kvyat by 0.351s. The two Red Bulls looked very competitive during FP2, with Daniel Ricciardo also setting strong lap times on his long run before becoming the cause of a stoppage with 20 minutes remaining.

Having been running quicker than Lewis Hamilton on soft tyres on high fuel, Ricciardo came to a halt at Turn 11 after a spectacular engine failure. The power unit was not Ricciardo's race engine, but team principal Christian Horner says it will leave him having to take a penalty later in the season.

Ricciardo ended the session in third place, half a second off Hamilton and 0.2s clear of Nico Rosberg who struggled to put together a consistent lap. Kimi Raikkonen ended FP2 in fifth place but was over 1.1s slower than Hamilton's fastest time.

Carlos Sainz was sixth for Toro Rosso ahead of Sebastian Vettel, with the four-time world champion struggling to get to grips with his car on Friday. A spin at Turn 12 prevented Vettel from setting a representative fast time, and he then spun again at Turn 1 on high fuel.

Fernando Alonso was eighth quickest as McLaren enjoyed an encouraging day, finishing FP2 1.8s off the pace. Racing director Eric Boullier said ahead of the session it had been a smooth start to the weekend which had gone slightly better than expected at a track where McLaren should be more competitive than recent races.

Valtteri Bottas and Felipe Massa rounded out the top ten for Williams, which is traditionally slower in Friday practice compared to its true qualifying pace.

Both Force India drivers sat out the second practice session following Sergio Perez's accident in FP1. Perez crashed heavily as a result of a failure on the right rear corner of his car, with the car rolling over after one of the front wheels caught under the chassis following the first impact with the barrier. With the team still to understand the cause of the problem, both Perez and team-mate Nico Hulkenberg were kept in the garage.