Piquet tops times on day 2 at Silverstone

The Brazilian eclipsed his teammate Heikki Kovalainen by just more than one tenth of a second - even though he is not fully at ease in the R26 cockpit yet.

"The seat is not quite right as yet, and it will take a while before it is good," he told autosport.com. "I still get bruises and also the seating position is not right, because now I have to look down to the steering wheel buttons to operate them.

"But hopefully that will get sorted when I get more mileage. It is good to be able to do so many laps."

Of more concern to the team, however, will be the engine failure that the Brazilian suffered this morning.

Pedro de la Rosa set the third quickest time, as he was joined by Lewis Hamilton - the man hoping to beat him to the second McLaren race seat next year. In the end, de la Rosa was nine tenths faster than sixth fastest Hamilton.

Franck Montagny continued to impress for Toyota, as he set about working on tyre evaluation for the Japanese car manufacturer.

He had been drafted in for a second day to replace the unwell Ricardo Zonta - and the only blot on his copybook was a spin in the afternoon.

Williams test driver Alexander Wurz was fifth fastest, in the Cosworth-powered car, while teammate Narain Karthikeyan managed to put 40 more laps on the interim Toyota car - despite a spin.

Behind eighth fastest Takuma Sato in the Super Aguri, Alexandre Premat, who will be Spyker-Midland's third driver in China, got his first taste of the car.

Ronnie Quintarelli, who completed a number of laps in the Midland early in the morning, was at the bottom of the timesheets.

Today's times:

Pos  Driver        Team                    Time      Laps
 1.  Piquet        Renault           (M)   1:19.565   72
 2.  Kovalainen    Renault           (M)   1:19.690  118
 3.  De la Rosa    McLaren-Mercedes  (M)   1:19.920  114
 4.  Montagny      Toyota            (B)   1:20.631   89
 5.  Wurz          Williams-Cosworth (B)   1:20.818   68
 6.  Hamilton      McLaren-Mercedes  (M)   1:20.852   62
 7.  R.Schumacher  Toyota            (B)   1:21.130   54
 8.  Sato          Super Aguri-Honda (B)   1:21.982   32
 9.  Premat        MF1-Toyota        (B)   1:23.212   40
10.  Yamamoto      Super Aguri-Honda (B)   1:23.708   33
11.  Karthikeyan   Williams-Toyota   (B)   1:24.032   40
12.  Quintarelli   MF1-Toyota        (B)   1:36.638    7