Alonso 4 tenths ahead of Vettel in FP2

F1 Grand Prix, GP Canada, Circuit Gilles Villeneuve

Fernando Alonso dominated the second practice session at Canada and topped the timesheets until the end, lapping around Circuit Gilles Villeneuve 0.369s quicker than Sebastian Vettel. Felipe Massa was third fastest, ahead of Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button.

After his crash in the first practice session, Sebastian Vettel took charge early on in the session to benchmark some settings. He was improved by Nick Heidfeld and later on by Fernando Alonso as well.

It was also still Alonso who was at the top of the rankings when Kamui Kobayashi hit the wall and got the session suspended after 58 minutes. The driver was ok, and 5 minutes later all cars were allowed back on track.

Hardly a minute later Virgin Racing driver Jérôme D'Ambrosio found himself in the wall at turn 4, breaking the nose and the front suspension of his car. The Belgian is out of action for the remainder of the session. As the car could be pulled away quickly, the session was restarted 3 minutes after the incident.

At the same time Lewis Hamilton limped back to the pitlane after suffering a right rear puncture. He went out on the brand new set of supersofts. Losing them might prove a deficit for Hamilton in qualifying and the race.

With 12 minutes left on the clock, Fernando Alonso went out again on the supersofts and improved his time once more. Alonso had another go a few laps later on the same tyres but after a fast first sector found himself too slow for another improvement.

Despite various attempts from others to improve the Ferrari's time, neither succeeded and Alonso stayed on top, 0.369 seconds ahead of Sebastian Vettel and another tenth on teammate Felipe Massa.