Patronise F1

Despite spending most of the afternoon languishing down at the foot of the timesheets, Fernando Alonso pulled out a stunning, albeit low fuel, run at the end of FP2 to pip the dominant form of Felipe Massa to the top time.

Once again the track conditions were far from ideal, with light drizzle coming and going as the clouds rolled over, but the heavier rain again kept away, and the 90 minute session was largely free of interruptions.

Massa had spent most of the session clear on top, though he did spend the first 35 minutes or so scrapping with Jarno Trulli's Toyota, which refused to bow down to the home boy's steamroller, and gamely pipped Massa's time twice, while Nico Rosberg also spent a few minutes at the top of the times in the early running, before falling back as other qualifying simulations came through.

Behind Massa, Trulli ended the session a promising third, with Kimi Raikkonen taking fourth in the other Ferrari, despite having another unconvincing time of things throughout the session. He ended ahead of Mark Webber, who needed a late run to lift him ahead of his retiring team mate David Coulthard, and Sebastian Vettel, who returned to the pace after a poor performance in the morning session.

Nelson Piquet Jr also saw his fortunes improve with the last run, like his team mate, and he was lifted from 20th to 7th with his final timed run, pipping Rosberg, Hamilton and Nakajima, who completed the top ten.

For Hamilton, it was a session that never really got going. He never really figured in amongst the leaders, and many of his runs were as scruffy as his last runs in the morning session. Indeed, his final effort was ruined almost before it began as the McLaren man completely messed up the first corner, heavily flat spotting a Bridgestone as he did so. At the end of the session, Hamilton seemed angered. The first signs of this year's bottling performance, perhaps?

Away from the top ten, the BMWs struggled to 12th and 13th, while Heikki Kovalainen was faring even worse than Hamilton, ending the session 15th and ahead of only the Hondas, the Force Indias and Sebastien Bourdais, who managed to spin approximately seventeen times during the 90 minute session.

Despite all that, the stage is still set for Hamilton to emerge victorious, even after Massa's display today. While the Brazilian man is undoubtedly favourite to claim pole position tomorrow and the race win on Sunday, Hamilton still knows that 5th place will be enough.

The only issue in this session being that he didn't look good enough for 5th place.