Practice 2 Report - Red Bull Underlines Pace in FP2

Red Bull Racing again set the pace in the second session of free practice for Sunday's Japanese Grand Prix. The 2009 Suzuka winner, Sebastian Vettel, again topped the time sheets with a lap in 1:31.465, 0.395s quicker than championship leader Mark Webber.

As in the opening session, the closest challenger was Renault's Robert Kubica (1:32.200), who survived a trip through the gravel. Fernando Alonso's Ferrari stopped the clocks in 1:32.365 to set fourth best lap but a time 0.9s adrift of Vettel suggests that the Monza/Singapore winner is going to have a tough task to make it a hat-trick of wins.

"We had hoped we would come here and have an advantage," Webber said, "but there is still a question over the weather for qualifying and so you can't be sure of what's going to happen."

Felipe Massa's Ferrari (1:32.519) was fifth quickest, two hundredths clear of Jenson Button's McLaren (1:32.533). Team mate Lewis Hamilton (1:33.481) only managed a handful of laps at the end of the session after his crew had repaired the car after his off at Degner in the first session, the 2008 world champion ending up 13th.

Vitaly Petrov, hoping to secure a second year at Renault alongside Kubica, set a 1:32.703, ahead of Michael Schumacher (1:32.831) in the first of the Mercedes cars. Adrian Sutil was ninth quickest (1:32.842) with the first of the Force Indias, a hundredth up on Nico Hulkenberg's Williams-Cosowrth (1:32.851).