Vettel quickest in second Spain practice

The McLarens of Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button had set the pace in the day's earlier session, but Red Bull showed firm signs of its expected advantage around the Catalunya circuit once soft tyres were bolted on for runs towards the end of the second 90-minute practice.

Vettel was the only driver to below the 1m20s barrier, setting a best time two tenths of a second faster than team-mate Mark Webber, who sat atop the timesheet for the majority of the session after posting the best time on the hard tyre runs early on.

The pair were, ominously, six tenths clear of the rest of the field. But the pack was tightly packed behind with the next six tenths covering from third to ninth.

Michael Schumacher was the fastest of the challengers, continuing to overshadow Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg this weekend with the latter only seventh.

Fernando Alonso finished the session fourth after finding a significant increase in pace on the softer tyre and working his way down to a 1m20.8s.

Hamilton lay second to Webber early on, but only improved by two tenths of a second later in the session while most others were making significant gains on the soft tyre. He ended up fifth with his McLaren team-mate Jenson Button was ninth, but less than two tenths slower.

Robert Kubica was sixth quickest for Renault, ahead of Rosberg and Felipe Massa, with Adrian Sutil completing the top 10 after reclaiming his seat from Paul di Resta.

Pedro de la Rosa did his first running of the weekend after losing the morning practice to a gearbox problem. He completed 37 laps and finished 11th.

Lotus was again the quicker of the new teams, this time with Jarno Trulli leading Heikki Kovalainen. Lucas di Grassi was 21st in his older-spec Virgin, while Timo Glock was only 24th in the new version.

The session's only stoppage came early on when Nico Hulkenberg crashed his Williams. The German ran wide exiting the quick right-hander onto the back straight, but kept his foot in and lost the car on a bump as he tried to rejoin. He spun back across the track and into the wall on the inside, damaging the front and rear of his car and taking no further part in the session.

Elsewhere, Jaime Alguersuari's session was cut slightly short when he stopped out on track with just three minutes of the session remaining.

Pos  Driver         Team                     Time              Laps
 1.  Vettel         Red Bull-Renault         1:19.965            24
 2.  Webber         Red Bull-Renault         1:20.175  + 0.210   35
 3.  Schumacher     Mercedes                 1:20.757  + 0.792   28
 4.  Alonso         Ferrari                  1:20.819  + 0.854   30
 5.  Hamilton       McLaren-Mercedes         1:21.191  + 1.226   23
 6.  Kubica         Renault                  1:21.202  + 1.237   36
 7.  Rosberg        Mercedes                 1:21.271  + 1.306   27
 8.  Massa          Ferrari                  1:21.302  + 1.337   25
 9.  Button         McLaren-Mercedes         1:21.364  + 1.399   26
10.  Sutil          Force India-Mercedes     1:21.518  + 1.553   32
11.  de la Rosa     Sauber-Ferrari           1:21.672  + 1.707   37
12.  Liuzzi         Force India-Mercedes     1:21.904  + 1.939   32
13.  Kobayashi      Sauber-Ferrari           1:21.931  + 1.966   29
14.  Buemi          Toro Rosso-Ferrari       1:22.184  + 2.219   37
15.  Barrichello    Williams-Cosworth        1:22.192  + 2.227   33
16.  Petrov         Renault                  1:22.435  + 2.470   35
17.  Alguersuari    Toro Rosso-Ferrari       1:22.449  + 2.484   34
18.  Hulkenberg     Williams-Cosworth        1:23.765  + 3.800   7
19.  Trulli         Lotus-Cosworth           1:24.209  + 4.244   26
20.  Kovalainen     Lotus-Cosworth           1:24.894  + 4.929   22
21.  di Grassi      Virgin-Cosworth          1:25.066  + 5.101   30
22.  Chandhok       HRT-Cosworth             1:25.972  + 6.007   23
23.  Senna          HRT-Cosworth             1:26.152  + 6.187   25
24.  Glock          Virgin-Cosworth          1:26.596  + 6.631   21

All Timing Unofficial