Practice 2 Report - Hamilton fastest in FP2

Abu Dhabi winner Lewis Hamilton (1:13.392) topped the second session of free practice for the Brazilian Grand Prix at Interlagos.

The 2008 world champion was 0.16s quicker than Sebastian Vettel (1:13.559), with the double world champion's Red Bull team mate Mark Webber (1:13.587) just a couple of hundredths of a second slower.

In turn, Fernando Alonso's Ferrari (1:13.598) was just one hundredth adrift of the Australian, with Michael Schumacher's Mercedes stopping the clock in 1:13.723.

Felipe Massa (1:13.750) was sixth quickest, a couple of hundredths quicker than Jenson Button's McLaren (1:13.787).

Nico Rosberg's Mercedes (1:13.872) finished the session eighth fastest, ahead of the Force India pairing of Adrian Sutil (1:14.144) and Paul Di Resta (1:14.807).

Typically for Interlagos, a circuit at which car performance plays more heavily than driver input, less than half a second covered the top eight drivers and, from ninth through the entire rest of the grid, the animals went in two-by-two.

The Renaults of Petrov and Senna finished the session 11th and 12th, the Saubers of Perez and Kobayashi 13th and 14th, the Toro Rossos of Buemi and Alguersuari 15th and 16th, the Williams pairing of Maldonado and Barrichello 17th and 18th, the Lotuses of Trulli and Kovalainen 19th and 20th, the Marussia Virgins of D'Ambrosio and Glock 21st and 22nd and the HRTs of Ricciardo and Liuzzi, 23rd and 24th.

Friday is notoriously difficult to call as drivers assess tyres on differing fuel loads. As an indicator though, both Hamilton and Vettel did 16 lap runs on option (soft) tyres, with both drivers setting their quickest times on lap 12.

Vettel lapped in 1:17.1 and Hamilton in 1:17.8, suggesting that either the Red Bull has a better race pace on the soft Pirellis or that McLaren was running a higher fuel load, as proved to be the case in Suzuka when there was a significant gap between the two.