Silverstone FP2: Rosberg on top as Hamilton struggles

After setting the fastest time of the morning session at Silverstone, Nico Rosberg maintained his hold on the top of the timesheets in the afternoon with Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen was second, 0.02 of a second ahead of Sebastian Vettel.

Lewis Hamilton, meanwhile, finished in fourth place almost half a second down on his team-mate’s time, having made a mistake in the final sector of his low-fuel run.

The session saw its first incident after just 20 minutes when Romain Grosjean went off at Luffield, the Frenchman spinning his wheels hard in the gravel trap only to succeed in burying it deeper in the dirt.

The spin brought out the red flags but the stoppage was brief and when action resumed Red Bull’s Daniil Kvyat jumped into second place, on the hard tyres, his lap of 1:35.009 providing good enough to keep him in the top five right until the end of the session.

Rosberg was the first front-runner to make the shift from the prime tyre to the option medium-compound tyre and he immediately claimed P1 with a lap of 1:34.155s, 0.367 of a second up on Sebastian Vettel who was quickest at that point. It would be good enough to keep Rosberg at the top of the list for the remainder of the session.

Hamilton, though, was struggling with his car, claiming during his medium run that the “car was not in a good slot” and that it was “all over the place” during his long runs.

It was left to Raikkonen to take the fight to Rosberg and with half an hour remaining he closed to within four tenths of a second of the Mercedes driver.

With Vettel third ahead of Hamilton and Kvyat, sixth place went to the second Red Bull Racing car of Daniel Riccirado, with the Milton Keynes-based team enjoying a solid outing on day after enduring a torrid weekend of power unit penalties in Austria a fortnight ago.

After taking third and fifth places in the morning session, Toro Rosso again showed well in the afternoon with Max Verstappen seventh and Carlos Sainz ninth. Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg split the Toro Rosso pairing in the revised Force India, which will make its race debut this weekend. Tenth place in the session went to Williams’ Felipe Massa.

Grosjean wasn’t the only driver to have an off in the session or the last to bring out the red flags. Soon after the Frenchman beached his Lotus at Luffield, McLaren’s Fernando Alonso went off at the same spot, though the Spaniard was able to edge his way out of the gravel trap and resume.

Manor’s Roberto Mehri wasn’t so lucky when he had his spin at the same corner. Coming to rest at the track edge he managed to select reverse but the red flags were already out to once again bring the session to a brief standstill. He eventually got going again when the marshals pushed him back on track.

[highlight ]British Grand Prix, Free Practice 2 - Friday, 3 July 2015[/highlight]