» Brazilian GP: Hamilton goes quickest in FP2

Lewis Hamilton has ended the opening day of running at the Brazilian Grand Prix on top of the timesheets after going quickest in today’s second practice session at the Sao Paulo’s Interlagos circuit. The 2008 Champion was closely pursued by the Red Bull pairing of Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber.

With the afternoon’s session again occurring under sunny skies, Hamilton’s eventual 1:13.392 on a soft-tyre run was good enough to claim top spot on the timesheets, just 0.167 seconds fastest than Vettel, who was less than three-hundredths of a second quicker than team-mate Webber.

It was a closely-fought session overall, with just seven-tenths of a second splitting the top nine runners. Fernando Alonso finished mere fractions slower than Webber in fourth place, while Michael Schumacher managed to split the Ferraris and go fifth-fastest, one spot better than local hero Felipe Massa.

Jenson Button finished seventh-fastest, after being unable to improve his lap-time when he switched to the softer Pirelli rubber. He finished ahead of Nico Rosberg (Mercedes GP) and the two Force India runners of Adrian Sutil and Paul di Resta.

Interlagos has typically been one that highlights the strengths and shortcomings of the various cars, and its pattern of producing ‘Noah’s Ark’ style timesheets was on display again, as the teams wound up two-by-two from ninth place onwards.

Team Lotus’ near rear wing could be paying dividends, with Jarno Trulli and Heikki Kovalainen lapping just over half a second slower than the Williams runners (on aggregate), while they are comfortably ahead of the Virgin and HRT runners at the bottom of the timesheets.

————————————————————————————————————-

2011 Brazilian Grand Prix – Free Practice 2 Session Times:

	Driver	Team	Time	Laps
1.	Lewis Hamilton	McLaren Mercedes MP4-26	1:13.392	35
2.	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull Renault RB7	+ 0.167	41
3.	Mark Webber	Red Bull Renault RB7	+ 0.195	41
4.	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari F150° Italia	+ 0.206	35
5.	Michael Schumacher	Mercedes GP W02	+ 0.331	38
6.	Felipe Massa	Ferrari F150° Italia	+ 0.358	39
7.	Jenson Button	McLaren Mercedes MP4-26	+ 0.395	36
8.	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes GP W02	+ 0.480	42
9.	Adrian Sutil	Force India Mercedes VJM04	+ 0.752	41
10.	Paul di Resta	Force India Mercedes VJM04	+ 1.415	48
11.	Vitaly Petrov	Renault R31	+ 1.464	38
12.	Bruno Senna	Renault R31	+ 1.539	37
13.	Sergio Pérez	Sauber Ferrari C30	+ 1.578	32
14.	Kamui Kobayashi	Sauber Ferrari C30	+ 1.627	45
15.	Sébastien Buemi	Toro Rosso Ferrari STR6	+ 1.872	44
16.	Jaime Alguersuari	Toro Rosso Ferrari STR6	+ 1.996	41
17.	Pastor Maldonado	Williams Cosworth FW33	+ 2.287	43
18.	Rubens Barrichello	Williams Cosworth FW33	+ 2.511	40
19.	Jarno Trulli	Lotus Renault T128	+ 2.906	36
20.	Heikki Kovalainen	Lotus Renault T128	+ 2.946	48
21.	Jérôme d’Ambrosio	Virgin Racing Cosworth MVR-02	+ 4.639	39
22.	Timo Glock	Virgin Racing Cosworth MVR-02	+ 4.659	45
23.	Daniel Ricciardo	HRT F1 Cosworth F111	+ 4.975	42
24.	Vitantonio Liuzzi	HRT F1 Cosworth F111	+ 5.084	42