The two incidents left only a quarter of an hour of real running at the end of the session, in which Leclerc posted a 1m24.809s to fire his way up to the top of the order - then at the expense of the two Alfa Romeos who had opened the last-gasp soft-tyre running with good pace.
Prior to the red flags, George Russell had landed on top of the pile to reprise his position from FP1 with a 1m25.906s on the medium tyre, which allowed him to overhaul brief headliner Kevin Magnussen by half a second.
