Europe – Free Practice 2: Vettel Leads the Pack

As often, the afternoon session is more lively than the morning one, and the drivers are working for Sunday’s race. With temperatures higher – around 25 degrees in the air and 34 on the track – lap times quickly drop. After 30 minutes, it’s Michael Schumacher who is the fastest at 1:40.169. The gaps are once again particularly small, with Petrov (14th at that moment) only 9 tenths behind the seven-time world champion. The German will complain about an issue with the behavior of his F1 W03, but a quick pit stop will be enough to solve the problem and allow the driver to get back on the track.

Unlike this morning, the drivers are using the softest tires offered by Pirelli, and Rosberg is the first to go below the one-minute-forty mark with a time of 1.39.926. The question, as always, is how much fuel the cars are carrying onboard.

Yellow flag at mid-session following Pedro de la Rosa’s off-track excursion, embedding his HRT into the tire wall at turn 14. Sergio Pérez will also entertain spectators with a small spin in the hairpin at the beginning of the last sector a few minutes later.

At the start of the last 30 minutes, the activity on the track resumes with Vettel setting the fastest lap at 1:39.334. He is ahead of Nico Hülkenberg and Kamui Kobayashi. This leading trio will not change before the end of the session, as the drivers are in race configuration. Medium tires are also being used again by some teams, like McLaren for example.

At the end of the session, the trio of Vettel, Hülkenberg, Kobayashi is joined by Michael Schumacher and Bruno Senna, proving that the Williams performs well on this Valencia track, but as is often the case and especially this year, we’ll only really see clearly tomorrow afternoon during the qualifiers. But with 15 drivers within less than a second, it promises to be particularly tight.

Free Practice 2 Results of the European Grand Prix: