Alonso tops second day of Monza testing

The McLaren driver took over from teammate Lewis Hamilton, who was at the wheel of the MP4/22 all yesterday and this morning.

Alonso beat Hamilton's best by three tenths of a second, the Briton ending the day second fastest. Both McLaren drivers ran a total of 49 laps each.

The afternoon session was also marred by a short rainfall, while the rest of the day ran under cloudy but warm weather conditions.

BMW's Nick Heidfeld set the third fastest time of the day, while Toyota's Jarno Trulli and Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen were fourth and fifth respectively, less than a tenth of a second covering the trio.

All teams and drivers prepared for the high-speed characteristics of the Italian track, ahead of next week's Grand Prix, and today's running was stopped three times during the day.

The first red flag came out in the early morning, when Mark Webber stopped his Red Bull Racing car in the first chicane.

The second came before lunchtime, when Takuma Sato stopped his Super Aguri on track; and then for a third time at 2:00 pm, when Williams's Alex Wurz stopped at Turn 6.

Renault's Heikki Kovalainen, who finished the day sixth fastest, felt Renault made good progress ahead of the next race.

"We had a good day, and the car got better with every run," the Finn said. "We worked hard so that by the end of the day, the R27 was well-balanced.

"I think this will be a good baseline to work from on Friday at the Grand Prix, and at that time, we will focus on fine-tuning the set-up to extract the final tenths of a second for the race. The team did a good job today, and we made encouraging progress."

Testing continues at Monza tomorrow.

Today's times:

Pos  Driver      Team                     Time      Laps
 1.  Alonso      McLaren-Mercedes    (B)  1:23.155   49
 2.  Hamilton    McLaren-Mercedes    (B)  1:23.454   49
 3.  Heidfeld    BMW-Sauber          (B)  1:23.725   84
 4.  Trulli      Toyota              (B)  1:23.759   61
 5.  Raikkonen   Ferrari             (B)  1:23.773   59
 6.  Kovalainen  Renault             (B)  1:24.093   51
 7.  Vettel      Toro Rosso-Ferrari  (B)  1:24.266  101
 8.  Wurz        Williams-Toyota     (B)  1:24.356   70
 9.  Klien       Honda               (B)  1:24.595   92
10.  Webber      Red Bull-Renault    (B)  1:24.701   83
11.  Sato        Super Aguri-Honda   (B)  1:24.976   80
12.  Sutil       Spyker-Ferrari      (B)  1:25.278   76