Felipe Massa showed just why he had won the previous two editions of the Turkish Grand Prix by setting the morning pace, and remained at the top of the pile even though he could not match his earlier 1min 27.323secs effort second time around. The Brazilian did, however, set the third fastest time of the afternoon, despite a couple of moments, coming in ahead of
David Coulthard and
Heikki Kovalainen.
The Finn had been Massa's closest challenger in the first session, and was only half a second off his previous best in the second, but that was enough to drop him behind the flying Coulthard, who is expected to have been on a qualifying set-up to achieve the 1min 27.763secs lap he posted after lunch.
Kovalainen, who showed no ill-effects of his Barcelona shunt, will empathise with the Scot's team-mate,
Mark Webber, however, for the Australian suffered a big off 30 minutes into the session, bringing out the red flags while the remains of his
Red Bull RB4 were cleared away. Fortunately, the Australian was unhurt in the incident, which saw the car swap ends between turns six and seven, resulting in a heavy frontal impact with the barriers. Unsurprisingly, with four laps on the board, Webber was only 19th fastest on the day.
Coulthard's afternoon time was good enough for fifth overall, however, moving the Scot ahead of expected frontrunners
Fernando Alonso and
Robert Kubica. The Spaniard had to rely on his morning time for sixth spot, while Kubica found nearly a second between sessions to move up into seventh overall.
Jarno Trulli,
Kazuki Nakajima and the second
BMW Sauber of
Nick Heidfeld completed the top ten for the day.
Nico Rosberg could also have featured had he not had his best time scrubbed for taking a short-cut, while another famous 'son of', Nelson Piquet Jr had to settle for 16th on the combined sheet after failing to improve on his morning's 1min 29.082secs effort and seeing others leap-frog above him.
