Practice Two - Vettel pips Alonso in Montreal 11 Jun 2010
Sebastian Vettel set the fastest time in Friday afternoon’s second practice session for the Canadian Grand Prix. The Red Bull driver lapped in 1m 16.877s, and only Fernando Alonso with 1m 16.963s for Ferrari got anywhere close to him.
The indications were, however, that most were centred on race running, as the majority of the remaining fast times were set early in the 90-minute period.
Nico Rosberg was the initial pacesetter with 1m 17.151s for Mercedes GP, and that held up for third fastest ahead of Red Bull’s Mark Webber on 1m 17.273s, Ferrari’s Felipe Massa on 1m 17.401s, Force India’s Adrian Sutil on 1m 17.415s, McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton on 1m 17.522s, Renault's Robert Kubica on 1m 17.529s, Mercedes GP’s Michael Schumacher on 1m 17.688s, Force India’s Tonio Liuzzi on 1m 17.903s and McLaren’s Jenson Button on 1m 17.961s.
Williams have higher hopes here, and the performance of Rubens Barrichello and Nico Hulkenberg bore that out as they were 12th and 13th on 1m 18.385s and 1m 18.447s respectively, ahead of Renault’s Vitaly Petrov on 1m 18.582s, BMW Sauber’s Pedro de la Rosa on 1m 18.658s, his team mate Kamui Kobayashi on 1m 19.142, and Toro Rosso’s Sebastien Buemi on 1m 19.168s and Jaime Alguersuari on 1m 19.274s.
One of the surprises was the speed of Heikki Kovalainen in the lead Lotus, who recorded an encouraging 1m 19.969s for 19th. Karun Chandhok also continued his strong performance in the revitalised HRT with 1m 20.879s, ahead of team mate Bruno Senna on 1m 21.097s, Jarno Trulli (who missed much of the session with technical gremlins) on 1m 21.346s, and the Virgins of Timo Glock and Lucas di Grassi on 1m 21.488s and 1m 21.577s respectively.
There were numerous offs in the tighter chicanes and in the hairpin, as drivers pushed as hard as they could in relatively cool and slippery conditions, but there were no significant incidents.
