In the second one-hour session of the day in sultry, cloudless conditions at Circuit Paul Ricard, Alfa Romeo duo Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu led the pack.
Bottas duly set the benchmark first place in 1m36.887s, with the entire opening run run on medium compound tyres.
Zhou, Mick Schumacher and Esteban Ocon set fastest times in their first FP2 drives, with Fernando Alonso finishing the first five minutes ahead thanks to a 1m35.531s on the yellow wall rubber.
Just over five minutes later, Haas driver Kevin Magnussen took the lead with a 1m35.386s, before being quickly deposed by George Russell’s 1m34.810s.
The big hitters of the season – Ferrari and Red Bull – had yet to come out of the pits at this stage, before Leclerc emerged just before the 15-minute mark and, on his first fly, took the lead with a time of 1m34.182s , which immediately put him 0.6 seconds behind the pack.
Verstappen went out a few minutes after Leclerc and, as he did in FP1 and has done in many practices so far in 2022, immediately took first place, setting a 1m34.172 after two warm-up laps their means
This beat the times at the end of the first 20 minutes of the session, at which point Sainz, who had lost the first third of FP2 when Ferrari changed the floor of his car, went straight out on the soft tyres.
The Spaniard took the redwall rubber to the purple sectors in all three segments and took first place with a 1m33.322s, an improvement of 0.850s on Verstappen’s best effort in the middle.
A few minutes later, Leclerc was back out and now running the softs, which he used to overtake Sainz in 1m33.136s as he overtook his team-mate in sectors 1 and 3, matching him in the middle. third to run 0.186s clear.
Sainz had pitted after his first flying softs and, after Ferrari had made some adjustments, returned to action with the same set of C2 softs.
Now, just after the halfway point of the session, Sainz made significant lap gains on Leclerc in all three sectors to return to top position with a 1m32.527s, getting a good tow from Pierre Gasly’s AlphaTauri on the way down to the box directly to close. out of his lap.
Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB18, Sergio Perez, Red Bull Racing RB18
Photo by: Alastair Staley / Motorsport Images
By this stage, Verstappen had gone out again to run the softs for the first time, but encountering understeer in the technical section at the end of the first sector meant he overtook the pace leader Ferrari.
Verstappen started 0.247s adrift of Sainz after struggling in his RB18 at Turns 3 and 4, but then posted another quarter of a second to finish 0.550s behind in a 1m33.077s.
Running behind Verstappen, Leclerc, like Sainz earlier, had also pitted before heading out for a second run on the softs.
Here he gained 0.1s on Sainz’s best time in sector 1 before losing time for the rest of the lap – albeit with personal bests – to finish 0.101s behind.
At this stage, with just over 20 minutes to go, Lewis Hamilton finished fourth with his qualifying simulation effort on the softs – the seven-time world champion making his first track appearance in this event after giving his Mercedes W13 to Nyck. de Vries in FP1.
But Hamilton was clawed back into fifth by team-mate Russell a few minutes later, with the Mercedes drivers finishing 0.764 and 0.990 seconds behind Sainz respectively.
Lando Norris took sixth ahead of frontrunner Gasly, with Magnussen eighth and Daniel Ricciardo ninth in the second McLaren.
Sergio Pérez completed the top 10 ahead of Alonso and Bottas.
Several drivers had off-track moments, with Schumacher’s being the wildest in the early stages when the Haas driver lost the rear of his car entering Le Beausset and spun into the large run-off area before of stopping just short of the barriers which meant he was able to retire to the pits.
Russell ran hard on the curbs at the exit of Le Beausset moments later but, unlike Verstappen at the same venue in FP1, swerved quickly to the left to try to avoid damaging his ground.
Magnussen ran later at the exit of the second corner and was also concerned that the curbs had damaged his car, while Russell also had to be caught late through the Turns 3/4 chicane and went shoot through the runoff saying he couldn’t “reach the bollard” far left on the return, as required by the race director’s event requirements.
FP2 result: