Nurburgring, FP2: Vettel and Rosberg lead the way

After FP1 was dominated by Mercedes, the afternoon session at the Nürburgring saw Red Bull Racing rise to the top. World Champion Sebastian Vettel finished on top of the timesheet with a time of 1:30.416, set just after the half-hour mark.

“I wasn’t so happy with the car this morning and Mercedes were quick, but in the afternoon we were in better shape,” said Vettel. “We’ll see, but so far I am happy.”

Two-tenths of a second behind Vettel, who set his time at the start of his first run with the yellow-banded soft Pirelli compound, came Mercedes’ Nico Rosberg, narrowly in front of Vettel’s team-mate Mark Webber. Lotus took fourth and fifth with Romain Grosjean ahead of Kimi Räikkönen. Fernando Alonso, meanwhile, shook off his morning troubles and made up ground to finish sixth and team-mate Felipe Massa finished three-thousandths of a second behind in seventh place. Lewis Hamilton, this morning’s fastest man, finished eighth in the second Mercedes, ahead of McLaren’s Jenson Button. Paul di Resta was tenth for Force India.

While the session started with the medium compound prevalent, the soft compound began to appear after short opening runs. Webber was the first of the front-runners to take on the softer rubber. Already fastest with a time 1:31.790, he immediately picked up a second to reset the benchmark at 1:30.874.

After the halfway point, drivers settled into long runs. Red Bull split their drivers, with Webber returning to the medium compound and Vettel proceeding with running on the soft tyre.

The overwhelming impression form the session was that the soft tyre degrades at a much faster rate than the medium. Everyone managed a heavy schedule with most running more than 35 laps. The exception was Marussia’s Jules Bianchi who, suffering from illness, managed only ten laps during the 90 minutes.