Practice Two - Rosberg heads Williams one-two 08 May 2009
Nico Rosberg and Kazuki Nakajima set the fastest times of the session - and of the day - for Williams in second practice in Barcelona on Friday afternoon. It was a relatively inconclusive end, as some other fancied combinations were clearly not running at their fastest. It was thus difficult to draw any hard and fast inferences from an important day on which everyone tried out their new aerodynamic packages.
Rosberg, who stopped on the circuit right at the end, beat Jenson Button’s morning time of 1m 21.799s in the Brawn with 1m 21.588s. Nakajima’s best was 1m 21.740s. Fernando Alonso also dipped beneath it for 1m 21.781s for Renault.
Rubens Barrichello’s was the quicker Brawn, the Brazilian lapping it in 1m 21.843s for fourth. Button was sixth on 1m 22.052s, separated from his partner by Mark Webber’s Red Bull on 1m 22.027s. Sebastian Vettel was right behind them with 1m 22.082s.
There was a small gap to Nelson Piquet who, in between two off-track moments in his Renault, lapped in 1m 22.349s for eighth. Sebastien Buemi’s session got off to a bad start when his Toro Rosso stopped in Turn Two, but he got going later to post 1m 22.571s, which was a good recovery in the circumstances. Kimi Raikkonen completed the top 10, with 1m 22.599s for Ferrari.
Once again, the times were very close, with another four-tenths of a second covering the placings down to 16th. Toro Rosso’s Sebastien Bourdais was 11th on 1m 22.615s, ahead of Force India’s Giancarlo Fisichella (1m 22.670s), McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton (1m 22.809s), Heikki Kovalainen (1m 22.876s) in the other McLaren, Ferrari’s Felipe Massa (1m 22.878s) and BMW Sauber’s Robert Kubica (1m 22.948s).
Nick Heidfeld was 17th with 1m 23.173s in the second BMW Sauber, ahead of the Toyotas of Timo Glock (1m 23.360s) and Jarno Trulli (1m 23.623s) which focused on race work. Adrian Sutil was last, failing to record a time after fuel cell problems in his Force India.
The indications are that not much may have changed since the first day’s practice in Melbourne, but we’ll have to wait until Q1 and Q2 during Saturday’s qualifying to make the final assessment.
