Free Practice 2 – Alonso, the Night Toreador

Fernando Alonso springs a surprise in this second practice session of the Singapore Grand Prix as he beats Lewis Hamilton by a few hundredths of a second at the very end of the session.

The Renault was faster than the McLaren by 0.098 seconds. Felipe Massa for Ferrari and Heikki Kovalainen for McLaren are third and fourth, respectively, while Nico Rosberg impresses with his Williams in fifth place.

Hamilton was the fastest for the majority of the session, taking over from Rosberg.

Massa, who made a few off-track excursions but without damage, snatched the leader’s position from the Briton when there were only 15 minutes left. Hamilton even fell to 3rd place, overtaken by his teammate Kovalainen, who settled just 4 thousandths behind Massa.

It didn’t take long for Hamilton to come back with the softest tires in the final minutes. He briefly reclaimed the lead with a time of 1.45.752, beating Massa by 41 hundredths.

Alonso performs a magnificent last lap with a time of 1:45.654 just before the checkered flag thanks to his super-soft tires.

However, Hamilton retains the fastest lap of the day at 1:45.518, set a few hours earlier. The teams and drivers quickly adapted to the track.

Behind the top four, Rosberg stayed in the rhythm throughout the session and once again takes the fifth place ahead of Robert Kubica’s BMW. Kimi Räikkönen is only seventh and Jenson Button takes the eighth position.

The session was less eventful than the previous one, even though Timo Glock lost his front wing when he spun into the wall at the exit of turn 7. He still finished in 10th place behind Nakajima with the second FW30.

Sébastien Bourdais and Nick Heidfeld had to use the run-off areas. The Frenchman is 14th once again behind his teammate Vettel in 13th.

Mark Webber’s Red Bull sustained heavy damage during the first free practice session, and the team didn’t have time to repair it before the start of the second session. The Australian joined the track 27 minutes before the red lights signaled the end of the session. He secured 11th place on his final timed lap.

Giancarlo Fisichella’s Force India also faced difficulties. Initially, the Italian was in the top ten, but a gearbox problem in the second half of the session left him in 17th place.

Free Practice 2 Results – Singapore GP – 26 September 2008