The second practice session at the Bahrain Grand Prix took place under the floodlights, as the sun went down and the temperatures dropped. This was very important because the race and qualifying will also happen in the evening. That means this session was the only one at the start of the weekend that shows what the teams can really expect in similar conditions.

After a hot and tricky FP1 earlier in the day, all the full-time drivers were back in their cars. Max Verstappen, Charles Leclerc, Fernando Alonso, George Russell, Carlos Sainz and Oliver Bearman returned after sitting out the first session to let rookie drivers take their places.

At the start of the session, Charles Leclerc made a small mistake at Turn 10 while using medium tyres. Max Verstappen also went wide at the same corner.

A few moments later, a bigger problem happened to Fernando Alonso as his steering wheel stopped working and even came off in his hands. Luckily, he was going slowly at the time. The Aston Martin team had to change the whole steering column, and Alonso only returned to the track near the end of the session.

There were other issues too. Oscar Piastri locked up and went off the track briefly. Alex Albon also ran wide, and Lando Norris had problems with his helmet and HANS system and asked the team to replace Many drivers also found it hard to stop the car properly in the final corner, with lots of lock-ups and trips off the track.

McLaren started the session on a different strategy, using hard tyres while other teams used mediums or softs. But once they put on the soft tyres, they were very fast. George Russell was first to go fastest on softs, setting a time of 1:31.945, before Lewis Hamilton briefly beat that.

Then McLaren joined the fight properly as Oscar Piastri set the best time of 1:30.505, with his teammate Lando Norris just behind him in second. Russell was third for Mercedes, but more than half a second slower than Piastri.

Charles Leclerc took fourth for Ferrari, just ahead of Mercedes rookie Andrea Kimi Antonelli in fifth. Isack Hadjar had another strong showing for Racing Bulls in sixth, using medium tyres, which made his performance even more impressive. Max Verstappen was seventh for Red Bull and continued to complain about his brakes not working properly in the last corner. Lewis Hamilton finished the session in eighth place, Oliver Bearman was ninth and Carlos Sainz completed the top ten for Williams.