Heikki Kovalainen swept to the top of the timesheets in the second free practice session for the British Grand Prix at
Silverstone, although his lap wasn't good enough to better that of
Felipe Massa's morning effort.
With cloud covering the circuit gradually over the course of the 90-minutes and the wind picking up, many drivers found it difficult to match their efforts from the morning.
Indeed, most of the quick times were set in the first half of the session, with
Lewis Hamilton leading proceedings early on before swapping the lead with Mark Webber and then
Sebastian Vettel.
Kovalainen first hit the top spot after half an hour with a lap of 1min 20.353secs – which, incidentally, would have been good enough to top the session regardless - before bolting on softer rubber close to the hour mark to dip under the 1min 20secs mark with 1min 19.989secs.
None of the drivers were able to get close, with Kovalainen's closest rival coming in the shape of
Red Bull driver
Mark Webber, who popped up to second fastest in the closing stages, albeit more than half a second off Kovalainen.
It was a good session all round for the Red Bull team, with
David Coulthard also recording the fourth fastest time, just behind countryman Hamilton, who leapt up the leaderboard with his final effort of the day.
On the combined test sheet though, Massa is still as fastest. The Brazilian sat out much of the afternoon as his car was repaired following his earlier heavy shunt. Nonetheless, he returned to the circuit to record the eighth fastest time, just behind
Nico Rosberg in fifth, Vettel in sixth and
Jenson Button in seventh, the
Honda driver making a big improvement on his morning performance to ensure all three British drivers were inside the top ten.
After Massa's off this morning, the afternoon session was not without its fair share of incident either, although this time it was Toyota-backed drivers in the wars.
