Practice 2 Report - Renault's Friday afternoon special

Fernando Alonso set the fastest time of the Formula 1 practice on Friday afternoon but in the Ferrari and McLaren pits there was few knees knocking or lips trembling. The fastest time on Friday in F1 these days seems to be reserved for people who want to generate some publicity for one reason or another, while the top teams get on with their race set-up work and do not try to make headlines. One might have expected to see Felipe Massa at the front in order to show his strength in the psychological battle that is going on between he and Lewis Hamilton but even he could not beat Alonso, suggesting that the Renault may not have been fully ballasted with fuel.

Jarno Trulli was third fastest in his Toyota (the Cologne team being regular gaffer-dazzlers on Fridays in recent months. Kimi Raikkonen was fourth fastest in his Ferrari ahead of Mark Webber's Red Bull and the Toro Rosso of Sebastian Vettel. The top 10 was completed by Nelson Piquet, Nico Rosberg and Kazuki Nakajima (with Lewis Hamilton hidden between them) giving the bottom end of the top 10 a very 1980s feel to it.

David Coulthard was next ahead of Robert Kubica (who was clearly not trying too hard), Nick Heidfeld, Timo Glock and Heikki Kovalainen. The bottom end of the timesheets featured Rubens Barrichello, Sebastien Bourdais (who had several incidents), Jenson Button, Adrian Sutil and regular tail-end charlie Giancarlo Fisichella.

We do not expect the order to be the same 24 hours from now.