Full Throttle

Adrian Sutil topped the times for Force India in Friday’s second free practice session for Sunday’s Italian Grand Prix.

The 26-year-old German driver clocked a best time of one minute and 23.924 seconds to outpace nearest rival Romain Grosjean of Renault by two-tenths of a second, confirming the team’s strong recent form.

Two-times champion Fernando Alonso was third fastest in the other Renault on a day when the French team were at the center of a major controversy over events at last year’s Singapore Grand Prix.

The team, charged with possible race-fixing after allegedly asking former driver Nelson Piquet to crash deliberately, issued a statement in which they said they had started legal action against Piquet and his father Nelson Piquet senior.

The scandal, unfortunately, overshadowed nearly all of the on-track action in which the usual suspects in this year’s championship battle kept a low profile.

“Everything went well today,” said Sutil.

“The car was working perfectly and we can be very happy about the result. It was a very, very good time that came as a result of some good work, a great set-up and getting the tyres to work well.

“We didn’t try specifically to go fastest but if you are on top of your game and the car is working well there’s no reason why you couldn’t be P1 at the end of the session. It was a very productive day on a very cool track and it’s good to have some fun right now.”

Defending world champion Lewis Hamilton, who was fastest in the morning for the McLaren Mercedes team, was down in 11th but was at least assured by seeing his team-mate Heikki Kovalainen clock fourth best time behind Alonso.

Championship leader Jenson Button was 19th for Brawn GP, sandwiched between 18th placed rival Sebastian Vettel of Red Bull and Italian veteran Giancarlo Fisichella, newly-installed at Ferrari, who was 20th.

Button’s Brawn team-mate Rubens Barrichello was 16th quickest, two places behind another title contender Red Bull’s Mark Webber of Australia.

These places confirmed that few of the leading men in the field were clocking lap times that were of much significance when it came to assessing what may happen in Saturday’s qualifying session.

On another hot and dry day, with spells of sustained late-summer sunshine, the track temperature reached 38 degrees Celsius and the air temperature 28 degrees, high enough to give the Brawn team little excuse for extracting a good performance from their cars and tires.