Sebastian Vettel just edged out Lewis Hamilton at the top of the timesheets during second practice for the Italian Grand Prix.
Vettel's time of 1:24.010 was just 0.036s quicker than Hamilton, who was on target to substantially improve his time during the low fuel soft tyre runs but came across Jaime Alguersuari crawling round the Parabolica and had to take evasive action before immediately pitting.
Michael Schumacher was an encouraging third for Mercedes, 0.337s off the pace, just ahead of Felipe Massa, Fernando Alonso, Mark Webber and Jenson Button as the top seven were separated by less than half a second.
Vettel set the early pace ahead of Alonso and Massa as Ferrari looked to close the gap from first practice, but it was a less successful ninety minutes for Toro Rosso as Sebastian Buemi's session ended very early when he ran wide on to the grass exiting the Parabolica and hit the tyre wall on the outside of the corner, heavily damaging the whole of the left hand side of the car.
When teams switched to the soft tyre it appeared to give sustained performance as Schumacher, Sergio Perez and Bruno Senna all improved their times the longer the run went on, but it also showed genuine pace as all three ended the session in the top ten. Webber appeared to be carrying a decent amount of fuel as he started his run on the soft tyre 1.4s off the pace and slowly lowered his mark by a second over a number of laps.
Webber also got some interesting data as he followed Hamilton late in the session on heavy fuel, only using his DRS in the designated zones. Having closed up ahead of the Ascari chicane, Webber cruised by along the start-finish straight despite Hamilton being full throttle, which could see a lot of easy overtaking come race day.
At the back of the field, Daniel Ricciardo only managed seven laps as an electronic problem kept him in the garage for the majority of the session, while Nico Rosberg also had problems and was over five seconds off the pace despite completing 25 laps.
There were a few close shaves during the afternoon as Alguersuari was forced on to the grass by a Sauber on the start finish straight, and Vettel had to cut the first part of the Ascari chicane to avoid one of the Virgins. And the session ended under yellow flags as Kamui Kobayashi ground to a halt in his Sauber just after the second Lesmo.
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