Alonso fastest in second practice at Interlagos

Renault's Fernando Alonso ended the second practice session fastest, on a chilly day at Interlagos.

The Spaniard, who had spent most of the session in the bottom half of the time sheets, clocked a time of 1m 12.314, 5/100ths of a second faster than last year's pole time set by Felipe Massa. It is likely that the time, set at the end of the session, was done on low fuel and new tyres, as he often has on Fridays this season. Many of the front runners did not do low fuel runs at the end of the session.

Massa, who has dominated his home race for the last three years, watched the session on the Ferrari pit wall.

Sebastien Buemi was second, with Rubens Barrichello third. The Red Bull cars were fourth and seventh.

Jenson Button ended up 5th. Early on he was struggling with low tyre temperatures, a similar problem to the one which troubled him in the middle of the season. It was a chilly day, the air temperature just 18 degrees. The forecast is for rain showers this weekend.

The chilly conditions caused a lot of graining on the softer of the Bridgestone tyres and this will need to be watched over the weekend and may affect the tyre strategies for the race.

After several spins and a spectacular incident in the first session when Romain Grosjean demolished a marker board, the second session was low on incident. Giancarlo Fisichella stopped at the pit lane exit and stalled the Ferrari when he tried to do a practice start.

As always in Interlagos the field was extremely close; the whole field was separated by less than a second with the top 12 cars squeezed into half a second!

This will make qualifying very challenging indeed as a mistake worth a tenth or two could drop a driver five or six places on the grid. Button has not had a good time recently in qualifying and will have to be right on top of his game if he is to avoid giving himself another complicated Sunday afternoon.