Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsRace weekend

Rosberg turns the tables on Hamilton in FP2

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Nico Rosberg set the fastest time of second practice for the Brazilian Grand Prix as Mercedes opened up a clear advantage over Ferrari.

While it was Lewis Hamilton who led his Mercedes team-mate by half a second in FP1, Rosberg matched that result in the afternoon session as he ended up with a similar margin at the top of the times. Sebastian Vettel had been just 0.1s slower than Rosberg in first practice but saw that gap widen to almost a second on the soft tyre runs in FP2.

Kimi Raikkonen was another 0.2s back from his Ferrari team-mate in fourth place ahead of Daniel Ricciardo and Valtteri Bottas during a tricky afternoon of running due to the threat of rain.

Light spots of rain fell throughout the majority of the 90-minute session, but the track temperature was high enough to not require drivers to switch from the slick tyres. However, the slightly greasier track conditions led to a number of spinners, with Alexander Rossi sliding at Turn 3 before Max Verstappen had his second spin of the day, this time at Turn 8.

Bottas was another driver to spin as he lost control at Turn 9, before pace-setter Rosberg then ran very deep at Turn 12 and had to slowly return to the track across the grass run-off area.

While Mercedes extended its advantage over the rest of the field, the midfield pack was closely matched on a short circuit as 0.6s covered Ricciardo in fifth place to Verstappen in 14th. Lotus will be encouraged by Romain Grosjean ending the session seventh quickest ahead of Nico Hulkenberg in eighth, Daniil Kvyat in ninth and Felipe Massa tenth.

McLaren dropped further off the pace than it had been in FP1 and there were more reliability worries for the team as Fernando Alonso stopped on track. Alonso had completed just 10 laps when smoke began emerging from the rear of the car and he had to pull over, bringing out the red flags while the stricken McLaren was recovered.

Long runs focused on tyre degradation, with Red Bull telling Ricciardo that a number of drivers were struggling to make the soft tyre last, while Verstappen complained of his medium tyres quickly running out of performance.

AS IT HAPPENED: Brazilian Grand Prix FP2

FP1 report: Hamilton 0.5s clear in first Brazilian practice

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Pos	Driver	Team	Time	Laps
01	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1:12.385	42
02	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1:12.843	39
03	Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	1:13.345	41
04	Kimi Raikkonen	Ferrari	1:13.500	43
05	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull	1:13.585	39
06	Valtteri Bottas	Williams	1:13.603	37
07	Romain Grosjean	Lotus	1:13.634	45
08	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India	1:13.710	43
09	Daniil Kvyat	Red Bull	1:13.848	40
10	Felipe Massa	Williams	1:13.870	42
11	Sergio Perez	Force India	1:14.056	34
12	Pastor Maldonado	Lotus	1:14.124	42
13	Felipe Nasr	Sauber	1:14.134	44
14	Max Verstappen	Toro Rosso	1:14.226	35
15	Carlos Sainz	Toro Rosso	1:14.326	45
16	Jenson Button	McLaren	1:14.644	37
17	Marcus Ericsson	Sauber	1:14.772	38
18	Fernando Alonso	McLaren	1:15.129	10
19	Will Stevens	Manor	1:16.501	35
20	Alexander Rossi	Manor	1:16.787	35

Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.