Just as predicted, the session started off with a little bit of rain, but the weather played out in the teams' favor after a few minutes. The drivers started to use intermediate tires instead of wet ones some 20 minutes into the P2, while the last part of the session even gave the teams a chance to test their cars on dry compounds.
Just when everybody was ready to do some quick laps in the end on the super soft tires and, more importantly, some good track conditions, the session was red-flagged by the race marshals due to the fact that some spectators were present in a dangerous area around the track. That left plenty of drivers unhappy and frustrated, especially since the clock continued to run.
Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa positioned themselves ahead of all other drivers in the pit lane, waiting for a restart. That allowed the Spaniard to have the whole track free ahead of him, and helped him score consecutive fastest laps in the remaining minutes. Felipe Massa was the first driver to follow him in the time charts during the first sector, but was unable to keep the same pace throughout the entire lap.
Adrian Sutil could have finished on top of the classification hadn't it been for a slight mistake he did in the second sector of the track. Nevertheless, he walked away with an impressive 2nd place, ahead of McLaren's Lewis Hamilton (0.216s behind Alonso) and Renault's Robert Kubica (0.250s behind the leader). Ferrari's Felipe Massa had to settle for 5th overall, more than half of second off the pace of his teammate.
Red Bull's highest placed driver, Sebastian Vettel, scored only the 6th best time of the day, but was still able to end the Friday running ahead of Jenson Button. The Top 10 was completed by Pedro de la Rosa, Rubens Barrichello and Kamui Kobayashi. Mercedes duo Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg only scored the 12th and 13th lap times respectively.
Unlike in the first practice session, there were plenty of incidents in the 90 minutes of action in the afternoon, the P2 being characterized by changing weather, changing track conditions and a red flag.
Force India's Vitantonio Liuzzi damaged the front wing of his car when he went off at Rivage, while Virgin's Timo Glock crashed into the barriers in Turn 9.
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