Sebastian Vettel was the quicker of the Red Bull Racing drivers during today’s second practice session at Interlagos. The double world champion was the second-fastest driver of the afternoon, posting a best time of 1:13.559 after 41 laps. Mark Webber also completed 41 laps, setting a best time of 1:13.587 to finish third on the timesheets.

The on-track action resumes tomorrow with Free Practice 3 which starts at 11am local time.

Vodafone McLaren-Mercedes

Martin Whitmarsh, Team principal, Vodafone McLaren Mercedes

“It’s always a pleasure to come to Brazil: the people here live and breathe Formula 1 – and rightly so, for their country has produced some of the greatest and most legendary drivers in grand prix history. The challenge of Interlagos never diminishes – it really is one of the giants of our sport – and our engineers and drivers relish the challenge of taming such a tricky, unpredictable and idiosyncratic course. Today, I think both Lewis and Jenson proved that our car works extremely well on the Prime tyre. The performance differential between the Prime and the Option is relatively small this weekend – as a result of Pirelli’s bringing a new soft tyre for the weekend – and Jenson wasn’t quite able to extract the full potential from the Option. But we’re confident that we can make the necessary changes to his car this evening, and that should leave us in a strong position for the morrow. As always in Sao Paulo, the weather threatens to play a greater part in proceedings over the next few days; but, for the moment, the sun is shining, we’re pleased with the progress we’ve made, and we’re confident in the direction we’ve chosen for the rest of the weekend.”

Scuderia Ferrari

Pat Fry

“Once again today, we had a lot of work to get through, especially with an eye to next year. Even if the day did not flow as smoothly as silk – we had to interrupt Fernando’s last run this morning because of an engine problem – we managed to complete our planned programme: now comes the job of analysing all the data gathered, which falls mainly to our colleagues back in Maranello, who are working flat out on the design of the new car. In the afternoon, we concentrated on finding the best balance on the car and on evaluating tyre behaviour over short and long runs. I would say there is still a lot of work to do in this area, because neither driver is yet happy with the handling of his car, but there is still plenty of time to work on improving the situation before tomorrow afternoon’s qualifying. The weather is another unknown factor regarding the rest of the weekend: at the moment there is a strong chance of rain affecting the race on Sunday, but we know how easily the forecast can be proved wrong.”

Mercedes GP Petronas

Ross Brawn

“We had two very good practice sessions today on the last Friday of the 2011 season. Both sessions ran well and we achieved the work that we had planned. As always, there is still progress to be made tomorrow ahead of qualifying. A positive day with good work from Michael, Nico and the team.”

Norbert Haug

“We made quite a positive start to the weekend and saw a second practice session where the lap times appeared close between P1 and P8. Our long runs during race simulations on heavy fuel loads were not perfect today and there is more work to be done on the set-up of our cars. The forecast predicts rain for tomorrow and for race day, so perhaps this 2011 season finale will have some surprises in store.”

Sahara Force India F1 Team

Dominic Harlow, Circuit Engineering Director

“The flowing Interlagos layout is quite short so that allows you to complete a lot of laps during Friday practice sessions. In good conditions Nico, Paul and Adrian ran a variety of tests, mostly looking at set-up for this event. The weather could offer some challenges if it deteriorates as expected for Sunday, so naturally that figured in our plans today. As well as wing level, gear ratio and various set-up options, we also had a chance to try a development Pirelli tyre, which was useful. We have to collate our results now and improve the car performance for tomorrow and the race.”

Lotus-Renault GP

Alan Permane, Trackside Operations Director

“We ran with Pirelli’s 2012 development hard tyre for a stint on both cars in FP1, as well as the medium compound. In FP2 we used Pirelli’s new soft and medium compounds. Romain’s run in FP1 was cut short by a failure of a developmental clutch part. Romain did a good job as he did in Abu Dhabi. We struggled on the medium tyres for general grip with both understeer and oversteer. This tendency is much reduced on the soft tyres. We saw a big difference in lap time between the medium and soft compounds. We are struggling on the medium compound as shown by both Bruno and Vitaly going around 1.5 to 2 seconds quicker on the soft tyre. Our pace with the soft tyre is more in line with our expectations.”

Sauber F1 Team

Giampaolo Dall’Ara, Head of Track Engineering

“In the morning we concentrated mainly on the set-up of the car using the two sets of test tyres Pirelli have provided for this event. In the afternoon our main focus was on the race preparation. We only used the compounds that are allocated for the weekend, which are soft and medium. We made a tyre comparison, which included runs with high fuel loads. Unfortunately Sergio had to stop early due to a gearbox problem.

Scuderia Toro Rosso

Laurent Mekies, Chief Engineer

“We had a busy day, completing our programme with our two cars and three drivers, all of whom were able to try different set-ups and run with the three compounds Pirelli has brought here; the experimental Hard for next year and the Medium and Soft which are the choices for the rest of the weekend. We were trying to find the right compromise in set-up terms because you have a very slow infield and a very long uphill straight. However, this weekend it seems there will be another factor in the equation, as after a nice dry and sunny day with high track temperatures, it looks as though we are heading for a wet weekend. It will be interesting to see how it evolves and I feel we have scanned enough elements today to have a good idea what to do whatever the conditions. Now we need to put everything together and make no mistakes in tomorrow’s qualifying.”

AT&T Williams F1

Mark Gillan, Chief Operations Engineer

“We completed a full day’s programme in preparation for both qualifying and the race, testing the three different tyre compounds and optimising both mechanical and aerodynamic set-ups. Set-up is going to be especially important given the potential changeable weather conditions throughout the weekend.”

Team Lotus

Thierry Salvi, Renault Sport F1 Support Leader

“From the engine perspective I think we can be pleased with how today has gone. We have completed very decent mileage on both cars and have amassed enough data to help us progress more tomorrow around what is a pretty unique track. We have to find the right balance between strong driveability and top end power and give the drivers good responsiveness to maximise the lap times around Interlagos, and from where we finished today it looks like we are heading in the right direction.”

Mike Gascoyne, Chief Technical Officer

“An excellent Friday for the team. In the first session we ran Luiz Razia and he did a really good job, completing his whole programme and apart from one small mistake on his quickest lap, which probably cost him half a second at the last corner, he can be very satisfied with his day’s work. With the two race drivers we were evaluating a new rear wing which maximises the effect of the DRS system. That worked exactly as we had predicted and gave us a significant improvement in lap time which has helped us move another step closer to the cars immediately ahead so I think we can look forward to a good final weekend of 2011.”

Riad Asmat, Group CEO

“That was a good last Friday of the season for us. This time last year we were racing a car that we had stopped development on in the middle of the season, and this year we have come to the last race with a new rear wing that has immediately paid dividends. That is a good sign of the continuing progression of our team and it bodes well for next year that the investments we have made in critical areas are giving us good returns right up to the end of the season. We have had a strong latter part of 2011 and I think we can push even more over this weekend, so we will aim to keep up this momentum tomorrow and see what we can do in qualifying.”

Marussia Virgin Racing

John Booth, Team Principal

“Both sides of the garage have had a good opening day in Brazil with the drivers and engineers completing the intended programmes with no issues. The prototype hard tyres which we ran at the start of each session appear to be a step forward from the current hard tyre and enabled the drivers to ease into the circuit and track conditions before using the intended compounds for this race. Both cars have tried various different set-ups today with some focused towards how a wet set-up would perform in the dry, since we are expecting changeable conditions for the remainder of the event. The long run pace on the soft tyre appeared to be pretty consistent and the degradation much lower than we predicted coming into this circuit. As with most other runners we seem to be experiencing instability at the rear and both cars need to dial in the balance overnight. Overall we are happy with the day and look forward to what the weather brings us for tomorrow and Sunday.”

HRT F1 Team

Colin Kolles, Team Principal

“I am satisfied with the job that the team and the three drivers have done today. In the morning Jan Charouz took Tonio’s car and he was focused and worked well with the team. It was his first real F1 Grand Prix experience and he lived up to the expectations doing more laps than anyone else and finishing just 6 tenths behind Daniel. We’ve had a trouble-free day and Daniel and Tonio were consistent and managed to complete the scheduled programme in the afternoon. Our direct rivals remain within reach and I am confident that we can cut down the differences tomorrow”.