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 for first place at 1m36.887s, with all the early runs conducted on medium compound tyres.
Jow, Mick Schumacher and Esteban Ocon set faster times on their first flyers of FP2, with Fernando Alonso completing the first five minutes on top thanks to 1m35.531s on the yellow-walled tyre.
Just over five minutes later, Haas driver Kevin Magnussen moved to the front with a 1m35.386s before being quickly overtaken by George Russell with a 1m34.810s.
The season’s big players – Ferrari and Red Bull – hadn’t yet left the pits at this stage before Leclerc appeared just before the 15-minute mark and with his first flier moved to the top of the time with a 1m34.182s which immediately set it 0.6 seconds behind the pack.
Verstappen came out a few minutes behind Leclerc and, as he has done in FP1 and in many practice sessions so far in 2022, immediately took first place, setting a 1m34.172s after completing two warm-up laps of his mids.
This topped the times at the end of the first 20 minutes of the session, at which point Sainz, who had missed the first third of FP2 as Ferrari changed the flooring of his car, headed straight on the soft tyres.
The Spaniard moved the red tire to purple sectors in all three segments and claimed first place with a 1m33.322s, an improvement of 0.850s on Verstappen’s best effort in the intermediates.
A few minutes later, Leclerc was back and now running a soft which he used to overtake Sainz at 1m33.136s as he overtook his team-mate in sectors one and three, while matching him well in the middle third to go 0.186s clear.
Sainz pitted after his first soft flyer and after Ferrari made a few adjustments he was back in action with the same set of C2 softs.
Now passing just after the midway point of the session, Sainz recorded significant lap gains on Leclerc in all three sectors to return to top spot with a 1m32.527s – getting a good tow from Pierre Gasly’s AlphaTauri as he ran down the pit straight. to close from his lap.
By this stage Verstappen had re-emerged to run the softs for the first time, but encountering an understeer through the technical section at the end of the first sector meant he fell well behind the Ferrari’s leading pace.
Verstappen started 0.247s behind Sainz after struggling with his RB18 through Turns 3 and 4, but then surrendered another quarter of a second to finish 0.550s back in 1m33.077s.
Running behind Verstappen, Leclerc, like Sainz before him, also pitted before heading into the second soft run.
Here he gained 0.1 seconds off Sainz’s best time in sector one, before losing time over the rest of the lap – albeit with personal best times – to finish 0.101 seconds back.
At this stage with just over 20 minutes to go, Lewis Hamilton was in fourth place with his qualifying simulation effort on soft – the seven-time world champion making his first track appearance at this event after relinquishing his W13 to Nick de Vries in FP1 .
But Hamilton was pushed back to fifth by team-mate George Russell a few minutes later, with the Mercedes drivers finishing 0.764s and 0.990s behind Sainz respectively.
Lando Norris took sixth ahead of the leading host, Gasly, with Magnussen eighth and Daniel Ricciardo ninth in the second McLaren.
Sergio Perez completes the top 10 ahead of Alonso and Bottas.
Several drivers had off-track moments, with Schumacher being the wildest in the early stages when the Haas driver lost the rear of his car on the Le Beausset corner and spun through the large run-off area before stopping just short of the barriers, meaning , that he was able to retire in boxing.
Russell went hard over the curbs at the exit of Le Beausset moments later, but unlike Verstappen at the same venue in FP1, he quickly swerved to the left to try to avoid damaging his floor.
Magnussen later ran wide on the exit of turn two and was also concerned that curbs had damaged his car, while Russell also had to take a late hit through the Turns 3/4 chicane and shoot through the runoff, claiming he couldn’t to “reach the post” far left in the runoff as required by the race director’s requirements.
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