Alonso goes quickest in FP2

Practice for the German GP resumed this afternoon on a mainly dry track.

There were some damp patches however and some drivers were caught out by those tricky conditions at the start of the session. Kamui Kobayashi, for instance, had a few moments in his first lap out but managed to keep his Sauber on track.

In the meantime, his teammate Pedro de la Rosa set the early pace with a tour of 1’21’’516. He was then joined at the front by both Force Indias of Liuzzi and Sutil. The three of them traded the fastest time for a while, until Fernando Alonso upped the pace with a 1’18’’307.

Button subsequently moved up to P2 while his teammate Lewis Hamilton was still waiting for his mechanics to complete repairs on his McLaren.

With thirty minutes gone, Alonso was leading from Massa, Schumacher, Button and Sutil.

This hierarchy stood still for a while as a light drizzle had started to fall on Hockenheim.

It didn’t prevent Mark Webber from setting two successive fastest lap times and placing his Red Bull on top with a 1’17’’409. Alonso immediately stroke back to reclaim top spot but there was more to come from Webber. The Australian lapped in 1’16’’585 to go fastest midway through the session.

As the rain eased off, teams were able to do some back-to-back evaluation of the two Bridgestone compounds available to them this weekend.

Alonso retook the lead with a 1’16’’265. Having been off track on his earlier run, Sebastian Vettel started a new run, on the super-soft tyre, and moved up to P2, 0.029s shy of Alonso’s mark.

Lewis Hamilton eventually joined in the action with just ten minutes remaining and managed to complete 10 laps. He ended the session seventh fastest.

There were more reliability woes for Jarno Trulli as he had to stop his Lotus at the hairpin.

Alonso held on to top spot with Vettel 2nd and Massa 3rd. Webber and Rosberg completed the top five.