Pastor Maldonado tops second Friday practice for the German Grand Prix

Heavy rain before the session meant a distinct lack of Formula 1 cars on track at first, bar Bruno Senna doing an installation lap in the Williams that Valtteri Bottas had crashed in the morning.

It was 20 minutes in before Jean-Eric Vergne, Charles Pic and Nico Rosberg came out and got the afternoon underway in earnest. Conditions were steadily improving at this stage, and a quarter of an hour later Rosberg switched from full wets to intermediates on his Mercedes, a move everyone else soon followed.

With the track getting quicker by the moment, the top spot then changed hands constantly after the next 25 minutes before the rain returned, ending the run of relatively quick times. Maldonado put his Williams on top with a 1m27.476s just before then, and that stood as the fastest of the session.

Most drivers came back out after the second shower passed, but found the track too wet to improve their times. There was still time for some incident though, as Michael Schumacher crashed the other Mercedes on the way into the stadium section, prompting a red flag with four minutes left that effectively ended the session.

Toro Rosso's Daniel Ricciardo also hit trouble late on, sliding into the gravel at the Sachs Kurve and getting beached.

Rosberg ended up classified second, ahead of Sebastian Vettel's Red Bull, Sergio Perez's Sauber and Romain Grosjean's Lotus.

Everyone managed a reasonable amount of running despite the conditions, with the exception of Pedro de la Rosa, who spent a long time in the garage while HRT worked on his car's brakes, meaning he missed the best of the weather.

Pos  Driver                Team                  Time               Laps
 1.  Pastor Maldonado      Williams-Renault      1m27.476             14
 2.  Nico Rosberg          Mercedes              1m27.564s  + 0.088   24
 3.  Sebastian Vettel      Red Bull-Renault      1m27.902s  + 0.426   24
 4.  Sergio Perez          Sauber-Ferrari        1m28.402s  + 0.926   26
 5.  Romain Grosjean       Lotus-Renault         1m28.420s  + 0.944   20
 6.  Nico Hulkenberg       Force India-Mercedes  1m28.495s  + 1.019   22
 7.  Daniel Ricciardo      Toro Rosso-Ferrari    1m28.513s  + 1.037   23
 8.  Jenson Button         McLaren-Mercedes      1m28.516s  + 1.040   16
 9.  Mark Webber           Red Bull-Renault      1m28.877s  + 1.401   21
10.  Kimi Raikkonen        Lotus-Renault         1m29.327s  + 1.851   22
11.  Jean-Eric Vergne      Toro Rosso-Ferrari    1m29.364s  + 1.888   26
12.  Felipe Massa          Ferrari               1m29.719s  + 2.243   15
13.  Kamui Kobayashi       Sauber-Ferrari        1m29.785s  + 2.309   24
14.  Charles Pic           Marussia-Cosworth     1m30.090s  + 2.614   19
15.  Timo Glock            Marussia-Cosworth     1m30.220s  + 2.744   16
16.  Bruno Senna           Williams-Renault      1m30.291s  + 2.815   22
17.  Heikki Kovalainen     Caterham-Renault      1m30.331s  + 2.855   26
18.  Paul di Resta         Force India-Mercedes  1m30.437s  + 2.961   14
19.  Lewis Hamilton        McLaren-Mercedes      1m30.617s  + 3.141   16
20.  Fernando Alonso       Ferrari               1m31.207s  + 3.731   20
21.  Vitaly Petrov         Caterham-Renault      1m32.241s  + 4.765   22
22.  Narain Karthikeyan    HRT-Cosworth          1m32.349s  + 4.873   17
23.  Michael Schumacher    Mercedes              1m32.777s  + 5.301   18
24.  Pedro de la Rosa      HRT-Cosworth          1m42.566s  + 15.090   8

All Timing Unofficial