Friday Practice Two - Alonso the surprise leader at Spa 05 Sep 2008
A light shower of rain interrupted proceedings in Friday’s second practice session for the Belgian Grand Prix this afternoon, and prompted both Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen and Force India’s Giancarlo Fisichella to make expensive errors as Fernando Alonso set the pace for Renault with a best lap of 1m 48.454s.
McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton had been the fastest man for most of the session, but as conditions improved a sudden flurry of fast laps at the end saw him pushed down to fourth as he failed to improve on 1m 48.805s. Between the Englishman and his former team mate came morning pacesetter Felipe Massa on 1m 48.504s for Ferrari and Heikki Kovalainen in the second McLaren on 1m 48.740s.
Raikkonen backed his Ferrari into the wall at Rivage midway through the session, damaging its rear wing and leaving him on 1m 49.328s for fifth overall. Williams’ Nico Rosberg jumped up to sixth on 1m 49.405s and Sebastian Vettel continued his recent upward trend with 1m 49.427s for seventh place in the Toro Rosso.
Adrian Sutil caused a bit of a surprise with 1m 49.585s for Force India ahead of Toyota’s Jarno Trulli (1m 49.715s), the BMW Sauber’s of Nick Heidfeld (1m 49.725s) and Robert Kubica (1m 49.875s), Red Bull’s David Coulthard (1m 49.922s) and Toro Rosso’s Sebastien Bourdais (1m 49.948s).
Coulthard and Bourdais had off-course adventures, at Les Combes.
Behind this group, Timo Glock was 14th for Toyota, ahead of Williams’ Kazuki Nakajima (1m 50.364s), Fisichella (1m 50.740s), Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello (1m 50.925s and 1m 51.238s) in the Hondas, Renault’s Nelson Piquet (1m 51.334s) and Red Bull’s Mark Webber (1m 51.640s). Piquet went off at Rivage, as did Webber, while Fisichella’s spun at Stavelot brought out the red flag for 10 minutes as water was swept off the track.
