Sebastian Vettel was the dominant pace setter in the second practice session ahead of this Sunday’s Italian Grand Prix at Monza.
The Belgian Grand Prix winner posted a time that was sixth tenths faster than his nearest rival, team mate, Mark Webber.
Behind the two Red Bulls were the two Lotuses of Kimi Raikkonen and Romain Grosjean, who, despite using different specification of car, set an identical lap time to the nearest thousandth. Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso was unable to give the Tifosi much to cheer about, and could only set the fifth fastest time of the session, a full eight tenths of a second off Vettel’s pace.
This morning’s pace setter, Lewis Hamilton, was behind him in the lap times but seemed to be visibly struggling with the balance of his Mercedes as he suffered several off track excursions.
The session was littered with errors from most of the top drivers, including an off from Alonso at the second Lesmo corner in the last ten minutes of running.
Thankfully though, there was no damage to speak off, however Felipe Massa’s day was ended early as he was forced to pull into the pits with a reported gearbox problem.
Vettel’s blistering pace this afternoon was in stark contrast to this morning’s session in which the top four were covered by just 0.188 seconds.
Hamilton just edged out Alonso at Ferrari’s home track, with Nico Rosberg and Sebastian Vettel completing the top four.
The final free practice session starts at 10am UK time tomorrow morning, with qualifying due to commence at 1pm.
