I am writing this in the dying embers of FP2 because I am now just too excited for the F1 season to get underway
If you had told me last week how the championship was going to go, I would have said well, Max Verstappen will probably take it pretty easily, fast forward one week, I think that Aston Martin and Fernando Alonso really are going to fight them and not let Redbull walk off with this championship.
With Alonso splitting the Redbulls in FP1 it showed there was some pace, but after the qually sims and race simulations in FP2 it looks very real. Of course maybe something is still being held back from all the teams. The qualifying simulations looked as though Alonso was fasted on the soft tyres. He finished the session wiht a 1:30:907, 0.169s quicker than Max and 0.171s quicker than Perez.
The race sims continued this with Alonso and Max lapping within 0.1s of each other before a sizeable gap back to their team mates and the Mercedes and Ferraris.
We won't be 100% sure until tomorrow and sunday but this season just got a little bit more spicy.