Ferrari need a good weekend, the last two have been appalling. In both Valencia and Britain Fernando Alonso has lost good points finishes due to poorly timed safety cars. He needs a rebound this weekend and today was a good start. The Spaniard has certainly had a dramatic first half of the season with the prancing horse. A win in the first race in Bahrain, a poor start and crash in Australia. A jump start in China. A weekend ruining crash in FP3 at Monaco and then two low/no point finishes in a row following a strong run in Montreal. Yet he has still looked stronger than Massa the whole year. The same was true today, the Spaniard topping the times with his teammate coming in just behind.

The track had almost dried by the time the cars made their way back out, it was certainly dry tyre weather despite several puddles in inconvenient places. The conditions saw many cars spinning or running off the circuit but none stopped as they did in the first session. Noticable by his absence for the first 70 minutes was Lewis Hamilton whose car was still being repaired following his morning shunt. When he finally appeared at the end of the session for a long run the times had tumbled down close to where they are likely to be later in the weekend.

So far you would not place bets against Red Bull but it looks like Ferrari could be their closest challenger here. Mclaren and Mercedes appear to be just a step behind but Hamilton especially tends to get the car above where it belongs and should be mighty in qualifying tomorrow whatever the weather. Further back and Timo Glock continued to push his Virgin car ahead of the Lotus' this represents a big step forward for Virgin and they were close to Toro Rosso by the end of the session, a team thats really struggled with reduced help from Red Bull this year. At the back was Sakon Yamamoto again who is still struggling to get up to speed, probably not the conditions he was hoping to have today as he learns the car.

We still don't know what will happen tomorrow, the track is still green and rain is forecast, whether it comes in qualifying we won't know until the session arrives but everyone will feel they haven't had enough time on track to sort out their setups and its going to be a tough one tomorrow.