Vettel fast at Monzaposted in F109 | 09 | 2011
FORMULA ONE World Championship leader Sebastian Vettel topped the timesheets at the end of the second Free Practice session ahead of this weekend's Italian Grand Prix. Bathgate's Paul di Resta, racing on the famous Monza circuit for the first time in his Force India, was 13th.
“Monza is not the easiest of tracks to get up to speed on," the 25-year-old Scot (pictured today), who sat out the morning session but who posted a fastest lap of 1min 25.683secs, and completed 37 lap, admitted.
"There are so many big stops on the brakes and it took me a while to find my rhythm this afternoon. Otherwise it was a typical Friday session without any dramas.
"We obviously concentrated on trying to find the best aero balance and worked on the stability of the car under braking.
See more photos of Paul di Resta at Monza today
What we have is a good baseline and not too far away, but once we’ve been through all the data we should have a better idea of where we can improve for tomorrow.
"It’s also clear that we need to find some speed overnight because the times around the middle of the pack are very close.”
Vettel meanwhile just managed to pip Lewis Hamilton; the McLaren driver had been fastest in this morning's session.
"The car feels good and it looks like McLaren are the ones to beat," Vettel, whose best time of 1:24.010s was 0.15s slower than Hamilton's best this morning, said.
"Obviously everyone's rear wing is more-or-less the same except McLaren's but we'll have to take a deeper a look and see how quick they are and then make a decision.
"It was an interesting day on a track that usually doesn't suit us but today I think we were pretty happy with the car. It's difficult to judge because Friday is always a bit of a mess here with traffic so hard to judge.
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"The raw laptime you see at the end of the day on a piece of paper. But the car felt good and we have had no problems so I am quite satisfied."
Behind the top two, Michael Schumacher continued his return to form by putting his Merecdes third, immediately ahead if the Ferrari duo Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso.
Sixth-fastest was Vettel's Red Bull team-mate Mark Webber, just ahead of the second McLaren of Jenson Button. The top 10 was rounded off by Sauber pair Sergio Perez and Kamui Kobayashi, followed by Bruno Senna's Renault.
Di Resta, despite sitting out the whole of the morning session to allow test driver Nico Hulkenberg time in the car, finished immediately behind his team-mate Adrian Sutil. The German was just 0.187s quicker.
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Craig James