Lewis Hamilton tops wet second practice for the Korean Grand Prix

McLaren dominated the times for the second free practice session for the Korean Grand Prix as the second 90 minutes of running provided no more dry running than the first had.

Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button were split by 0.104s, but the pair were 1.7s quicker than the rest of the field - headed by new double world champion Sebastian Vettel.

The second session exploded into life as soon as the pitlane opened with all the vivacity the first practice had lacked. None of the teams had achieved any worthwhile running in the first one, and even with the track still wet, the priority seemed to be to put the laps on the board.

Very quickly the Red Bull pair established themselves at the top of the times, with Vettel leading Mark Webber. But that only lasted as long as it took for the McLarens to get out of the garages and up to speed. Then Button and Hamilton began trading times over first position.

By the time they'd settled the initial argument, half an hour of the session had gone by, and Hamilton was top with a 1m50.828s, Button 0.5s behind - the track still wet enough for inters with the rain sporadic. The silver cars were two seconds faster than their Red Bull rivals.

Button returned to the track with 35 minutes gone and began setting fastest split times, improving to within 0.104s but staying second before returning to the pits, his set of inters finally shot.

Things stayed the same for a while until Fernando Alonso fired in a lap good enough to put him third fastest with 40 minutes to go - still the Ferrari driver was 1.9s behind the two McLarens, which seemed the car most happy in the intermediate conditions.

The Red Bulls returned to the track at the turn of final half hour and Vettel immediately re-established himself in third, but only just – the world champion still 1.8s off Hamilton's time. It was about this time that the most curious incident of the day occurred when Nico Rosberg collected Jaime Alguersuari's Toro Rosso as the Spaniard exited the pits.

The Mercedes driver ran wide on the exit of the very tight left-hander that is Turn 1 and simply skated into the Toro Rosso, damaging both cars. Not long after Alguersuari was on the radio complaining about the dangers of exiting the pits in Korea.

They weren't the only ones going off though: Hamilton, Alonso, Rubens Barrichello, Bruno Senna and several others all had similar moments.

Into the final ten minutes and still the track wasn't entirely dry. Sebastien Buemi tried the super soft tyres, but a spin on his out lap gave Toro Rosso its answer as to the adhesion levels on the track.

Webber too went on to the softer slicks and fared better – in that he didn't spin – but no way was the Red Bull changing the order.

So in the end the McLarens headed Vettel, Alonso and Webber with Alguersuari remaining an impressive sixth. Felipe Massa ended up seventh ahead of Rosberg, Buemi and Paul di Resta completing the top ten.

Pos  Driver                Team                   Time               Laps
 1.  Lewis Hamilton        McLaren-Mercedes       1m50.828s            26
 2.  Jenson Button         McLaren-Mercedes       1m50.932s  + 0.104   19
 3.  Sebastian Vettel      Red Bull-Renault       1m52.646s  + 1.818   30
 4.  Fernando Alonso       Ferrari                1m52.774s  + 1.946   25
 5.  Mark Webber           Red Bull-Renault       1m53.049s  + 2.221   27
 6.  Jaime Alguersuari     Toro Rosso-Ferrari     1m53.402s  + 2.574   25
 7.  Felipe Massa          Ferrari                1m53.707s  + 2.879   24
 8.  Nico Rosberg          Mercedes               1m53.914s  + 3.086   18
 9.  Sebastien Buemi       Toro Rosso-Ferrari     1m53.948s  + 3.120   27
10.  Paul di Resta         Force India-Mercedes   1m53.957s  + 3.129   32
11.  Vitaly Petrov         Renault                1m54.200s  + 3.372   26
12.  Adrian Sutil          Force India-Mercedes   1m54.392s  + 3.564   26
13.  Rubens Barrichello    Williams-Cosworth      1m54.831s  + 4.003   30
14.  Michael Schumacher    Mercedes               1m54.965s  + 4.137   21
15.  Bruno Senna           Renault                1m55.187s  + 4.359   28
16.  Sergio Perez          Sauber-Ferrari         1m55.203s  + 4.375   24
17.  Kamui Kobayashi       Sauber-Ferrari         1m55.544s  + 4.716   23
18.  Pastor Maldonado      Williams-Cosworth      1m56.067s  + 5.239   22
19.  Heikki Kovalainen     Lotus-Renault          1m56.669s  + 5.841   20
20.  Jarno Trulli          Lotus-Renault          1m57.173s  + 6.345   19
21.  Timo Glock            Virgin-Cosworth        1m58.269s  + 7.441   25
22.  Jerome D'Ambrosio     Virgin-Cosworth        1m59.458s  + 8.630   26
23.  Daniel Ricciardo      HRT-Cosworth           1m59.958s  + 9.130   19
24.  Tonio Liuzzi          HRT-Cosworth           2m00.165s  + 9.337   20

All Timing Unofficial

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