Singapore, FP2: Vettel moves ahead in second practice

Red Bull Racing sent a warning to their rivals in the second free practice session at the Singapore Grand Prix with Sebastian Vettel topping the timesheet a full second ahead of his nearest non-Red Bull rival, third-placed Nico Rosberg. Vettel’s team-mate Mark Webber was second.

A busy session started with tyre comparison work as the teams began on the medium tyre and then switched to short runs on the option supersoft. It was then that Vettel roared to the head of the order, recording a lap of 1:44.249 on his first run.

Webber might have got closer to his team-mate than the six tenths he had to settle for but during his low fuel run he brushed the wall and lost time.

That was a near as anyone got, however. Rosberg ended the session with a lap 1.009 down on the Red Bull pairing in third and fourth place went to his Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton who finished a tenth back.

Fifth place went to Romain Grosjean, despite the Lotus driver completing just 18 laps, a little over half the laps of Vettel. The French driver lost a lot of time in the first session due to steering issues and then in FP2 brake problems caused him to spend long periods in the garage.

Fernando Alonso was sixth for Ferrari, ahead of McLaren’s Jenson Button, Lotus’ Kimi Raikkonen, Force India’s Adrian Sutil and the second McLaren of Sergio Perez.

After the flurry of quick laps during the early low-fuel runs on supersoft, the session settled into a data gathering exercise as teams went onto long runs on both tyre compounds.

That resulted in little drama in the second half of the session. Pastor Maldonado overcooked his entry into turn 13 and nudged the barrier, a collision that caused him to pit for a new front wing, but that was the only incident of note.