Second practice is finished. It's perhaps a little bit early to draw conclusions but there are still some interesting things that happened. First of all ,and that could be very important to the qualifying and the race , turn7: Many drivers had problems in the braking zone of turn7, locking there front left tyre up and also some drivers had to take a wider line through it. This is surely one thing that is gonna important in the race as the tyres don't take lock ups to well. In the early stage of the practice Felippe Massa had this problem and when he went back to pits we could see on a close up of his tyres that they did look very bad. For Toyota it didn't go too well, some poeple supposed this after the winter practices, the car is just too slow so far. They've also had a technical break down on Trullis car (transmission hydraulics).
But not only Toyota had a break down, McLaren had also. 19min before the finish Kimi Räikkönen had to stop. So far the only information available is that it wasn't an engine damage.
Surely a surprise was that the Scuderia Torro Rosso was faster then expected. But if they can hold that speed in qualifying and race it will lead to some troubles as some opponents told (directly or undirectly) that they would file a protest if STR is faster then them. This has to do with the fact that STR uses restricted V10 engines from last year and that some poeple think that they are more powerfull than V8's.

Williams was also very fast hitting 3rd fastest lap.

Here are the times

1. Anthony Davidson (Honda) 1:31,353
2. Michael Schumacher (Scuderia Ferrari) 1:31,751
3. Alexander Wurz (Williams Cosworth) 1:31,764
4. Felippe Massa (Scuderia Ferrari) 1:32,175
5. Fernando Alonso (Renault F1) 1:32,528
6. Vitantonio Luizzi (Scuderia Torro Rosso) 1:32,703
7. Robert Doornbos (Red Bull Racing) 1:32,926
8. Giancarlo Fisichella (Renault F1) 1:33,215
9. Jenson Button (Honda) 1:33,226
10. Robert Kubica (BMW Sauber) 1:33,244

11. Christian Klien (Red Bull Racing) 1:33,557
12. Kimi Räikkönen (McLaren Mercedes) 1:33,577
13. Juan Pablo Montoya (McLaren Mercedes) 1:33,726
14. Nick Heidfeld (BMW Sauber) 1:33,848
15. Neel Janis (Scuderia Torro Rosso) 1:33,900
16. Scott Speed (Scuderia Toro Rosso) 1:34.284
17. Mark Webber (Williams Cosworth) 1:34.333
18. Rubens Barrichello (Honda) 1:34.384
19. David Coulthard (Red Bull Racing) 1:34.432
20. Tiago Monteiro (Midland F1) 1:34.459

21. Nico Rosberg (Williams Cosworth) 1:34.953
22. Ralf Schumacher (Toyota) 1:35.170
23. Markus Winkelhock (Midland F1) 1:35.686
24. Jarno Trulli (Toyota) 1:35.898
25. Jacques Villeneuve (BMW Sauber) 1:36.264
26. Christian Albers (Midland F1) 1:36.314
27. Takuma Sato (Super Aguri) 1:37.588
28. Yuji Ide (Super Aguri) 1:39.021

Do you have information on the number of laps completed, cos that would be useful for drawing any conclusions. Times on their own don't tell a great deal...

*Goes to F1 site*

It would appear that Williams, Ferrari and Honda are all very close in Sector 1, but Mr Davidson just destroys everyone else in Sector 2 and 3. I wonder what fuel loads people were carrying and what programmes they were running? On this info the competitors have to make sure they can jump Honda into T1 so they can't use their advantage from the off... Of course, this is Friday and the race is on Sunday, so a lot can and will change...

Speed Trap Figures

1 3 Kimi Räikkönen 310.3
2 17 Jacques Villeneuve 310.2
3 38 Robert Kubica 309.0
4 36 Anthony Davidson 308.3
5 4 Juan Pablo Montoya 308.0
6 35 Alexander Wurz 307.9
7 12 Jenson Button 307.0
8 6 Felipe Massa 306.5
9 5 Michael Schumacher 306.4
10 37 Robert Doornbos 306.2
11 11 Rubens Barrichello 306.0
12 7 Ralf Schumacher 305.8
13 1 Fernando Alonso 304.5
14 15 Christian Klien 304.5
15 2 Giancarlo Fisichella 304.3
16 21 Scott Speed 302.9
17 20 Vitantonio Liuzzi 302.7
18 23 Yuji Ide 302.3
19 8 Jarno Trulli 302.2
20 22 Takuma Sato 302.0
21 14 David Coulthard 301.9
22 18 Tiago Monteiro 301.8
23 19 Christijan Albers 300.9
24 9 Mark Webber 300.7
25 39 Markus Winkelhock 300.5
26 10 Nico Rosberg 300.2
27 16 Nick Heidfeld 299.4
28 40 Neel Jani 297.8

Yes I have, I will post them as soon as I sorted them

Thx for the info! Nice.

Anthony Davidson 28 laps
Alexander Wurz 27 laps
Robert Kubica 26 laps
Vitantiono Luizzi 24 laps
Robert Doornbos 24 laps
Neel Jani 24 laps
Markus Winkelhock 24 laps
Scott Speed 22 laps
Yiji Ide 21 laps

Takuma Sato 19 laps
Ralf Schumacher 18 laps
Christian Albers 16 laps
Michael Schumacher 15 laps
Juan Pablo Montoya 15 laps
Giancarlo Fisichella 14 laps
Tiago Monteiro 14 laps
Felippe Massa 13 laps
Fernando Alonso 13 laps
Jenson Button 12 laps
Kimi Raikkonnen 11 laps
Jarno Trulli 11 laps

Nick Heidfeld 9 laps
Rubens Barrichello 9 laps
Christian Klien 8 laps
Jacques Villeneuve 8 laps
David Coulthard 7 laps
Mark Webber 5 laps
Nico Rosberg 5 laps

Thanks for the detailed info, looking very forward to the qualifying!!!

Update:
Apparently it seems that Kimi Räikkönens car had electrical problems.

But Montoya may get his engine changed. There was some speculation about him losing top speed because the engine wasn't working properly

(or montoya wasn't working properly...)

The top 6 qualifying may be interesting, the Ferraris and the Hondas are little question marks still though...

Yes with the same RPM as Kimi he drove 7kph slower than him on the longest straight (not on the top speed that have been recorded by the traps, but in general, that's what they say anyway). Well it doesn't look too well for McLaren. Also the discussions about the V10 that STR uses started all over again cause Liuzzi was in the top ten.

Update on Montoyas engine:
The McLaren engineers decided to not change the engine. The speed difference is due to different engine mappings, the engines themself have no (mechanical) differences.

Thanks for the detailed stuff. Speed trap figures hint at current downforce setups.

Normally I'd agree with you Gunn, but there are so many unknowns right now. In the V10 era we were pretty sure of the pecking order of engine power, and thus could take that into account in speed traps. Now we don't really know who is best - the Cosworth is rumoured to be the most powerful and the V10 in the Toro Rossa is quite good too.

So I'd say the speed trap figures aren't that telling, but the more running we see over the weekend and further race meetings the more analysis will be accurate.

Though Toyota's engine isn't too bad either. It seems to me that the cosworth engine is quite good if looking at the price tag versus performance, but it certainly is not as good as the honda for example. Little surprise as the Toyota's speed trap speeds weren't any higher... (Trulli's fault, broke the car lol)

Tomorrow the truth reveals