Several other teams had disrupted sessions – including Aston Martin and Mercedes – while Williams produced a stunning result in front of its home fans.
The start of the session was delayed by five minutes so the track could be swept thoroughly following several offs and crashes occurring in the Formula 2 qualifying session, but FP2 ran to its usual one-hour limit.
Nyck de Vries led the pack out of the pits for AlphaTauri – the early running conducted on the C1 hard and C2 medium tyres.
Several drivers had a short stint in the top spot as they registered their opening laps before Perez established the first-place benchmark at 1m30.014s.
Verstappen then came through to move well ahead on a 1m29.550s – a time that stayed as the quickest for the next phase of the session.
As the opening 10 minutes came to a close, Perez was able to complete the medium running the two Red Bull cars with a quicker 1m29.451s.
But that did not stay as the top time for long, with Sainz also ending his initial laps on the mediums with a flier – a 1m29.083s that put him in front of Perez.
After a short lull in action ahead of the session’s middle third, the leaders re-emerged on soft tyres to complete the typical mid-FP2 qualifying simulation efforts.
Verstappen was the first of the frontrunners to head out on softs, which he used to blast to the quickest time in all three sectors and a new best time of 1m28.078s.
Source: Autosport