McLaren's Lewis Hamilton was the surprise leader at the end of second practice in Germany this afternoon, ending the first day of action on top. The reigning champion set a time of 1m32.149s near the end of the 90-minute session, going almost a second faster than this morning's fastest time from Red Bull's Mark Webber. Hamilton set his time on a short, likely low-fuel, run to beat home hero Sebastian Vettel's previous quickest of 1m32.331s.

Despite forecasts predicting light rain during the session, practice was mostly dry bar some light drizzle in the first ten minutes of the session. Unfortunately for Force India's Giancarlo Fisichella the damp track caught him out, sending him into a spin at turn 10 and into a barrier, damaging the front end of his machine and bringing his session to an abrupt conclusion.

First to set a laptime was Vettel, as he looked to make up for losing out on valuable track time this morning, setting the benchmark at a 1m37.646s. Glock, Kovalainen, and Heidfeld all went quickest over the course of the next 30 minutes, before Webber took over once again, lowering the bar to a 1m32.584s. With 65 minutes gone, Vettel then regained the lead on a 1m32.342s thanks to the super-soft tyres before he was ousted by Hamilton, also on the softer compound.

Vettel improved just before the end of the session to a 1m32.331s, but it wasn't enough to wrestle top spot from Hamilton, while championship leader Jenson Button (1m32.369s) and team-mate Mark Webber (1m32.480s) completed the top four. Jarno Trulli (1m32.511s), Adrian Sutil (1m32.585s), Rubens Barrichello (1m32.664s), Fernando Alonso (1m32.774s), Kazuki Nakajima (1m32.872s) and Nelson Piquet (1m32.992s) rounded out the top ten.

Underlining the competitiveness of the entire 20-car field, the top 16 cars were separated by just over a second. Nick Heidfeld (1m33.012s), Felipe Massa (1m33.052s), Nico Rosberg (1m33.128s), Robert Kubica (1m33.161s), Timo Glock (1m33.172s) and Kimi Räikkönen (1m33.182s) were within two tenths of each other between 11th and 16th.

Meanwhile, rounding out the timesheets were Heikki Kovalainen (1m33.724s), Sébastien Buemi (1m33.903s), Sébastien Bourdais (1m34.025s) and Giancarlo Fisichella (1m38.877s), the latter completing just three laps before his crash.