Practice 2 Report - Button quickest in dry Istanbul second session

Much to the relief of the F1 teams the second session of free practice in Turkey was held on a drying track in improving weather conditions and it was Jenson Button's McLaren (1:26.456) that topped the session.

Friday times rarely give an accurate reflection of a driver's race potential as teams undertake different programmes, a factor all the more relevant today after they lost 90 minutes worth of dry running time in the morning and having to pool their efforts to collate sufficient data this afternoon.

The initial signs look good for Mercedes, however, with Nico Rosberg (1:26.521) second quickest from Lewis Hamilton (1:1:27.033) and team mate Michael Schumacher (1:27.063) fourth fastest. The seven times champion did have one hairy moment, however, when he was caught out by a Force India up his inside on the exit of Turn 11 while on a high fuel run.

Mark Webber, with both a working DRS and KERS, was fifth fastest for Red Bull Racing (1:27.149) but was the team's sole on-track representative as world champion Sebastian Vettel sat out the session as a result of his morning crash at Turn 8.

Felipe Massa, three times a winner at Istanbul Park was the quicker Ferrari driver Massa (1:27.340) as team mate Fernando Alonso (1:28.069) finished the session just outside the top 10. Vitaly Petrov took the first Renault round in 1:27.517, a couple of tenths clear of Paul Di Resta (1:27.725), who continues to impress at Force India. Sergio Perez (1:27.844) and Adrian Sutil (1:28.052) completed the top 10 for Sauber and Force India respectively.

Williams woes continued with Pastor Maldonado lightly damaging his FW33 with his second incident of the day at Turn 8 and Rubens Barrichello's session curtailed early with a KERS water leak.