Vettel still fastest in Brazil

Practice for the Brazilian Grand Prix resumed this afternoon with a second 90-minute session.

As usual, the track quickly got busy as the teams were eager to go through their working program. Fifteen minutes in, only five drivers were still to post a time: Petrov – who crashed his Renault in the morning – both Red Bulls and both Ferraris.

Lewis Hamilton was the pacesetter with a 1’13’’048. He was leading from Schumacher and Kubica.

Massa and Alonso moved up to P3 and P4 with their first attempt, while Webber stormed at the front. As the Australian lowered the benchmark to a 1’12’’387, his teammate Vettel slotted in P2 and made it a Red Bull one-two at the top of the timesheet.

The German steadily improved but couldn’t beat Webber’s mark. He was 0.191s slower as he pitted.

Halfway through the session, Webber was still leading from Vettel, Hamilton, Massa and Button.

It all got calm for a while, afterwards, with very few improvements. Nick Heidfeld made the most of his soft tyre to move up to P5. With less than thirty minutes remaining, Massa jumped ahead of Hamilton but then had a mechanical problem which brought his session to an end.

In the meantime, Webber went out for a run on the soft tyre and found a few tenths of a second to further lower the benchmark. Also running on the option tyre, Alonso improved and went second fastest.

Vettel was yet to come out… and when he did, he broke the 1’12 barrier to take over at the front.

The session ended with long heavy-fuelled runs and Vettel’s time remained unbeaten.

The Red Bull driver set the fastest time of the day, 0.104s quicker than his teammate Webber. Championship leader Alonso was third fastest. Hamilton and Massa completed the top five.

At the other end of the field, Lotus was the fastest of the new teams. The Virgins of di Grassi and Glock were split by the HRTs of Senna and Klien.