Lando Norris led the way in second practice for the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix as George Russell got the better of title rival Kimi Antonelli.
McLaren's Norris ended the day 0.009 seconds clear of Russell on a baking hot day on the outskirts of Barcelona.
Antonelli is chasing a sixth-successive win this weekend having stormed into a 66 point lead over Lewis Hamilton in the standings after six rounds of the season.
The Italian finished down in fifth, having sat out the first practice session, with Norris' teammate Oscar Piastri third ahead of Ferrari's Charles Leclerc.
Russell has failed to score in the previous two races after his engine expired in Montreal and he was dropped out of the points by a late drive-through penalty in Monaco as Mercedes failed to serve his original five-second penalty correctly.
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The British driver is now 68 points adrift and needs to stop the rot and end the run of his teenage teammate Antonelli if he wants to claw his way back into title contention.
He will have been pleased to land an early blow on Antonelli this weekend and was over half-a-second ahead of his teammate.
The Italian's car was driven by reserve driver Fred Vesti in the weekend's opening running but Russell set the pace to again underlined Mercedes' dominance in 2026 -- having won every race so far.
Norris' championship defence has been decimated by reliability issues which have forced him to retire from three of the six races -- including each of the last two -- and left him 98 points behind Antonelli.
He has said that his chances of defending his title are starting to feel remote but McLaren showed signs that they could challenge Mercedes at the Circuit de Catalunya.
Hamilton, who vowed to chase Antonelli down for the rest of the season after claiming successive second-place finishes for Ferrari, was also absent from the weekend's first running.
The seven-time world champion said on Thursday that he was constantly pushing Ferrari to "level up" and was seen taking pictures of the back of the car on his phone following the first practice session.
But he was unhappy as he took to the track in FP2, saying: "Something wrong with the rear of the car, dragging down the straight."
He finished down in ninth and a huge 1.205 seconds off Norris' pace.
