MORNING REPORT: OCON LEADS THE WAY IN MORNING SESSION

Esteban Ocon led the way in the morning session of the second day of testing in a session which was largely uneventful, and interrupted by red flags.

Ocon on top for Alpine

Ocon's time of 1:34.276 was enough to top the timesheet after completing 51 laps. The Frenchman completed his fastest lap on the C4 soft compound tyres and Alpine will take plenty of positives from it, albeit a slightly limited testing session. 

Ferrari have looked arguably the most balanced in pre-season, and Charles Leclerc was 0.09 seconds behind Ocon's Alpine, and was running a different setup with medium tyres. Verstappen was third running the C3 hard compund tyres, but was over a second and a half down on Ocon. 

One of the headlines from the session was Nicholas Latifi's brake fire which caused a lengthy red flag. The Canadian was unable to resume his session and ended up finishing last on the timesheets with only 12 seconds to his name. He wasn't the only driver to suffer a technical issue as Sebastian Vettel was forced into the garage during the latter stages of the morning. 

A comical conclusion

With race control planning a standing start to make sure their systems were all working as planned they red flagged the session before confirming a standing start. Another formation lap was planned when Max Verstappen and George Russell missed the start, but the session was brought to a premature end as Valtteri Bottas was forced to turn his car off on the formation lap. It was an underwhelming end to an underwhelming session, truth be told. 

The standings

Esteban Ocon (Alpine) 1:34.276, 59 laps
Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) +0.09, 54 laps
Max Verstappen (Red Bull) +1.598, 45 laps
Sebastian Vettel (Aston Martin) +1.744, 46 laps
Lando Norris (McLaren) +2.078, 29 laps
Yuki Tsunoda (Alpha Tauri) +2.526, 44 laps
Valtteri Bottas (Alfa Romeo) +2.711, 25 laps
Mick Schumacher (Haas) +3.57, hards, 23 laps
George Russell (Mercedes) +4.309, hards, 67 laps
Nicholas Latifi (Williams) +5.569, 12 laps