The weather conditions for the second and final 90 minutes of action on the Monza track on Friday were perfect, with each team finalizing their setups and running mainly on the soft compound tires. The last half an hour saw plenty of front-runner try out the soft tires in conjunction with a low fuel specification, which shook up the classification a bit.
Felipe Massa was close to dethroning Vettel late in the session, but his quick lap – which included overall bests on all sectors – ended with him running wide at the Parabolica and nearly hitting the wall. Following that close-to-disaster mistake, the Brazilian did not make any more attempts to grand the leading spot.
After setting the pace for most of P2, McLaren's Lewis Hamilton had to settle for the 4th quickest time of the day – 0.315s behind Vettel – yet ahead of his teammate and P1 pacesetter Jenson Button by 0.056 seconds. Ham ran the entire session without the F-duct fitted on his car, while his teammate used it throughout the afternoon.
Red Bull's Mark Webber ended the day with the 6th fastest time, but this was hardly his biggest problem late on Friday. The Australian stalled his car at Lesmo 1 with 15 minutes still left on the clock and was eventually helped with a push to the garage afterwards. Following some quick investigations, it seemed his RB5 had suffered a water leak which will be thoroughly looked into by the Red Bull mechanics.
Rubens Barrichello and Robert Kubica scored the 7th and 8th best times respectively, while followed by Williams' Nico Hulkenberg and Mercedes' Nico Rosberg.
Incidents during P2 included Jaime Alguersuari's stalling his car on the track after half an hour of practice, along with HRT's Bruno Senna failing to make it to his pit garage early in the session (he stopped a few meters before reaching it). Additionally, the same Senna had to park his car on the side of the track after only 10 minutes of running later in the P2.
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