The gear box problem was put behind him and The Iceman came out in the second free practise session to top the time sheets. 

Lewis Hamilton was only 0.036s behind his main rival, showing that he and his McLaren are still very much in contention. His best times came while on the softer compound tyres while Raikkonen’s were done at the end of a series of runs on hard-compound tyres. 

Hamilton’s time came at the expense of Massa who dropped to third position. His first practise benchmark stood as the fastest time of the day. 

David Coulthard won ‘most improved’ driver of the day though. He came out on the ‘option’ tyres and beat Kovalainen and Kubica to take fourth on his last lap.

 His team mate did not have such an auspicious second practise. Mark Webber under steered coming out of turn five, putting him off-line through the next left-hander, causing him to stray two wheels onto the Astroturf on the exit. His RB4 was sent in to a spin and it slid across the track and hit the barrier head on. The impact shattered his front suspension, leaving both front wheels hanging off their tethers. Mark walked away unharmed but the session was red flagged for seven minutes while the track was cleared of debris. 

Rain was the cause of the damp track for this session. Bourdais came out on the intermediates but his lap was ten seconds off the morning’s pace. 

20 minutes in and with a dry track Raikkonen was keen to get back out there and he became the first front-runner to complete a timed lap of 1m29.235s. By Webber’s crash Kimi had upped the anti to 1m27.543s.  

Hamilton looked good on his first run out on the option tyres but a big moment in the middle of the super-fast turn eight meant he could not better Raikkonen’s time. 

Trulli bettered his first practise position to finish seventh in the afternoon. Nakajima continued his strong performance by coming in eighth. Alonso, on the hand, didn’t manage to maintain his good form and could only complete the session in ninth. Nick Heidfeld’s BMW completed the top ten.

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