• Abu Dhabi Grand Prix - FP2
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Hamilton fastest as Vettel and Alonso crash

ESPNF1 Staff
November 11, 2011
Lewis Hamilton headed a McLaren one-two in FP2 © Getty Images
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Lewis Hamilton set the fastest time of the second practice session for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix as Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso both crashed.

Hamilton's time of 1:39.586 was just 0.199s quicker than his McLaren team-mate Jenson Button as neither suffered the fate of Vettel or Alonso who both spun off at turn one. Despite that, Alonso was third ahead of Felipe Massa in fourth, with the Red Bull pair of Mark Webber and Vettel fifth and sixth quickest as the top six were separated by less than 0.6s.

Vettel spun at turn one after putting two wheels on the kerb under braking and slid sideways in to the wall. The expansive runoff area meant he managed to slow the car a lot but was unable to prevent it from nestling in the barriers. The damage was minimal, with just a broken front wing, but his session was interrupted as he had to wait for the car to be returned before getting back out for the final ten minutes.

Alonso soon followed suit as he lost the rear of his car later in the same corner, and slid backwards in to the barrier. He was less fortunate than Vettel, as he damaged the rear of the car and broke the suspension, ending his running.

Alonso had spent the early part of the session top of the timesheets after being the first man to drop under the 1m40s barrier. Button then pipped it by 0.001s until Hamilton went almost 0.4s quicker than the pair of them as McLaren showed its pace on the soft tyre.

Aside from Alonso's incident Ferrari also had worries over Massa's front wing, which was fluttering once again and seemed to get even worse after it was changed. It didn't affect Massa's pace though, as he was just 0.009s slower than his team-mate by the end of the session. Webber didn't enjoy a completely trouble-free evening either, as he spun under the Yas Hotel exiting turn 18, but managed to keep the car away from any barriers and continue.

Michael Schumacher was seventh quickest in the Mercedes ahead of both Force India's, who showed good pace to be half a second clear of the rest of the field.

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