Alonso stays in control at Spa

Weather conditions were more clement as practice for the Belgian GP resumed this afternoon.

Rain had stopped when the session started but the track was still wet from the morning’s showers. Wet tyres were the order of the day at first, but quickly made way for intermediate tyres.

Fernando Alonso was one of the first to make the switch and immediately established his Ferrari on top of the timesheets. With just over fifteen minutes gone, the Spaniard’s best time was a 1’59’’490. He was nearly a second quicker than Sutil’s Force India.

Sutil and Hamilton made the most of the improving conditions to go slightly quicker than Alonso and demote him from P1 to P3. In the meantime, Liuzzi had a moment at Rivage while Timo Glock crashed his Virgin at Turn 9.

Less than thirty minutes were gone by then, and light rain started to fall. It was short lived though and didn’t prevent Felipe Massa from going fastest… only for Robert Kubica to go even faster. The Pole set a 1’58’’311 to come on top, as Mark Webber moved up to P2. With less than an hour remaining, Sutil took over at the front with a 1’58’’149.

As the track was drying, Jaime Alguersuari went out for a run on the dry tyres and set two fastest splits to move up to P3. He significantly improved on his 2nd lap and went fastest by a huge margin. He set a 1’55’’329 to go almost three second faster than Sutil. Also running on dry tyres, Kamui Kobayashi edged the Toro Rosso driver to place his Sauber on top.

As Mark Webber was gearing up for a first run on the soft tyres, Jenson Button popped up at the front with a 1’51’’137. The McLaren driver further improved to dip under the 1’50 bracket. The order rapidly changed in the final part of the session as the track conditions got better and better.

The session was red-flagged with fifteen minutes remaining in the interests of safety. Race control suspected spectators were standing in a dangerous area. It restarted at 15.26 and the whole field – bar Glock – rushed on track to put in a hot lap.

Alonso set the fastest time to conclude this second practice session on top. Sutil was second fastest. Lewis Hamilton, Robert Kubica and Felipe Massa completed the top five. Vettel set the sixth fastest time for Red Bull. Button, de la Rosa, Barrichello and Kobayashi rounded off the top ten.

Championship leader Mark Webber was only 18th fastest, 2.6s down on Alonso.