After topping the morning session at Montreal’s Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, Lewis Hamilton doubled up in second free practice in Canada, beating Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel to top spot by 0.25s.

Hamilton’s best time, on the ultrasoft compound Pirelli tyres, was a 1:14.212, almost two tenths of a second up on his pole position time of 2015.

Vettel pressed the defending champion hard though. In the opening session the German was half a second adrift of his Mercedes rivals but on ultrasofts Vettel powered to a lap of 1:14.469 to get to within three tenths of a second of Hamilton.

Nico Rosberg was third quickest for Mercedes but he ended the session over a hald a second behind his team-mate. Behind the Mercedes and the quickest Ferrari, fourth and fifth places went to Red Bull Racing, with Max Verstappen ahead of Daniel Ricciardo by one hundredth of a second. However, while the gap between the team-mates was slight, they were almost a full second off the pace of Hamilton’s P1 time.

Sixth place went to Valtteri Bottas, with the Williams driver setting a time of 1:15.213, a time exactly matched by McLaren’s Jenson Button, who took seventh owing to setting his time after Bottas.

Button’s time came after a troubled morning session in which he turned just eight laps due to a power unit issue. The Briton made a delayed entry to the action after his power unit was changed but once on track he made the most of the new engine to match Bottas and to outpace Ferrari’s eighth-placed Kimi Raikkonen by 0.021s.

Nico Hulkenberg and Carlos Sainz completed the top ten ahead of Fernando Alonso, Sergio Perez and Felipe Massa. Massa managed 44 laps in the second session having crashed out in FP1.

2016 Canadian Grand Prix – Free Practice 2
1 Lewis Hamilton  Mercedes 1:14.212   43
2 Sebastian Vettel  Ferrari 1:14.469 +0.257 45
3 Nico Rosberg  Mercedes 1:14.738 +0.526 46
4 Max Verstappen  Red Bull Racing 1:15.156 +0.944 29
5 Daniel Ricciardo  Red Bull Racing 1:15.168 +0.956 43
6 Valtteri Bottas  Williams 1:15.213 +1.001 46
7 Jenson Button  McLaren 1:15.213 +1.001 35
8 Kimi Raikkonen  Ferrari 1:15.234 +1.022 43
9 Nico Hulkenberg  Force India 1:15.321 +1.109 50
10 Carlos Sainz Jr.  Toro Rosso 1:15.410 +1.198 42
11 Fernando Alonso  McLaren 1:15.450 +1.238 40
12 Sergio Perez  Force India 1:15.493 +1.281 47
13 Felipe Massa  Williams 1:15.513 +1.301 44
14 Daniil Kvyat  Toro Rosso 1:15.559 +1.347 42
15 Romain Grosjean  Haas 1:16.093 +1.881 35
16 Kevin Magnussen  Renault 1:16.255 +2.043 39
17 Felipe Nasr  Sauber 1:16.582 +2.370 40
18 Esteban Gutierrez  Haas 1:16.591 +2.379 32
19 Marcus Ericsson  Sauber 1:16.902 +2.690 51
20 Jolyon Palmer  Renault 1:17.001 +2.789 48
21 Pascal Wehrlein  Manor 1:17.023 +2.811 32
22 Rio Haryanto  Manor 1:17.423 +3.211 49