Singapore GP: Free Practice 2

The session was dry giving the drivers full opportunity to test both dry tyre compounds ahead of qualifying and the race.  It's still uncertain as to whether the race will be wet or not, but this period provided for some good trading of places at the top of the time-table.

All the teams went out on the Soft compound tyre with steady time being set until Bruno Senna caught a little of the wall after turn 20 and ended up stalling on the track mid-way around turn 21.  the session was red-flagged while the marshals got the car off track via a mobile crane.

It is obvious that there are still lessons that Singapore could learn from Monte Carlo, with no-place available to remove the car without halting the session.

Things began to heat up as the cars went out once the pitlane reopened with the top four favourites for this race trading times before Massa came out on the supersofts and claimed the fastest time.

Lewis Hamilton sports a new helmet design in Singapore
Courtesy of Vodafone McLaren Mercedes

This was immediately topped by Lewis Hamilton who went nearly a second faster on his new supersofts 1m49secs.  Webber then cracked into the 1m 48secs with a stunning lap on supersoft tyres before all of the front runners came out to try their hand at the red branded Pirelli's.

Alonso came out and beat Webber's time, followed by Button and then by Vettel before, with about 24 minutes remaining, the Ferrari Team stated they were going to concentrate on longer runs for the rest of the session.  Webber was called into the pits due to an issue with his car and then the fun stopped and the serious business of trying to find the best set-up for the weekend began, with a number of the teams checking out the longevity of the supersofts.

It is noteworthy that Timo Glock, in the Marussia, has outpaced the two Caterhams in both Free Practice Sessions today.

Caterham will hope for an improved performance tomorrow
Courtesy of Caterham F1

The final result of Free Practice 2, which did include some fun-to-watch fastest lap-time runs is as follows:

VET, BUT, ALO, WEB, HAM, DIR, HUL, ROS, MAS GRO, MSC, RAI, MAL, RIC, PER, KOB, SEN, VER, GLO, KOV, PIC, PET, DLR, KAR.