Massa was comfortably clear of team-mate Fernando Alonso, runner up in
Melbourne, with Webber fifth fastest and Romain Grosjean sixth on the
timesheet for Lotus.
Nico Rosberg again had the edge on Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton, with the
duo seventh and ninth and the latter a full second adrift of Raikkonen,
either side of Force India’s Paul Di Resta.
Hamilton, in particular, has been suffering with high degradation to his rear
tyres on a circuit where he has yet to win, with his highest finish second
in his debut year of 2007.
Adrian Sutil rounded out the top 10, but sat out most of the session with a
technical problem to his Force India that restricted him to 10 laps.
For McLaren, it is apparent Jenson Button and Sergio Perez again face an
uphill struggle in their bid to get into the top 10 as the duo finished 12th
and 11th respectively, 1.2secs down.
At present on this track there appears a clear gulf between the top six teams
and the bottom five of Sauber, Williams, Toro Rosso, Caterham and Marussia.
Sauber’s Nico Hulkenberg was two tenths of a second behind Button, with a gulf
then to his rookie team-mate Esteban Gutierrez who was two seconds off the
pace in 14th.
As in FP1, Marussia’s Max Chilton brought up the rear, almost five seconds
down on Raikkonen, but more alarmingly 0.7secs behind Giedo van der Garde in
the Caterham and a place ahead of the Briton, and two seconds behind
team-mate Jules Bianchi.
At one stage rain threatened to bring an end to proceedings 35 minutes from
the finish, but unlike the torrential downpours that often strike in
mid-afternoon given the searing heat and high humidity, it instead only
delayed matters.
All drivers bar an out-of-commission Sutil opted for a run on the intermediate
wet weather tyres, and given the track quickly dried, it allowed for a late
blast on the faster medium tyres but with no improvement in times.
Second practice times:
1 Kimi Raikkonen (Fin) Lotus-Renault 1min 36.569secs
2 Sebastian Vettel (Ger) Red Bull-Renault 1:36.558
3 Felipe Massa (Bra) Ferrari 1:36.661
4 Fernando Alonso (Spa) Ferrari 1:36.985
5 Mark Webber (Aus) Red Bull-Renault 1:37.026
6 Romain Grosjean (Fra) Lotus-Renault 1:37.206
7 Nico Rosberg (Ger) Mercedes 1:37.448
8 Paul Di Resta (Gbr) Force India-Mercedes 1:37.571
9 Lewis Hamilton (Gbr) Mercedes 1:37.574
10 Adrian Sutil (Ger) Force India-Mercedes 1:37.788
11 Sergio Perez (Mex) McLaren-Mercedes 1:37.838
12 Jenson Button (Gbr) McLaren-Mercedes 1:37.865
13 Nico Hulkenberg (Ger) Sauber-Ferrari 1:38.068
14 Esteban Gutierrez (Mex) Sauber-Ferrari 1:38.645
15 Jean-Eric Vergne (Fra) Toro Rosso-Ferrari 1:38.738
16 Pastor Maldonado (Ven) Williams-Renault 1:38.801
17 Daniel Ricciardo (Aus) Toro Rosso-Ferrari 1:38.904
18 Jules Bianchi (Fra) Marussia-Cosworth 1:39.508
19 Valtteri Bottas (Fin) Williams-Renault 1:39.66
20 Charles Pic (Fra) Caterham-Renault 1:40.757
21 Giedo van der Garde (Ned) Caterham-Renault 1:40.768
22 Max Chilton (Gbr) Marussia-Cosworth 1:41.438