World champion Raikkonen fastest in Istanbul afternoon session, but team-mate Massa holds on to top spot.

After being restricted to just three completed laps during the morning practice session at Istanbul Park, world champion Kimi Raikkonen had much work to do after lunch.

The Finn, however, was up to the task, rattling off three times as many tours of the Turkish circuit to post the fastest time of the afternoon session and vault from the bottom of the timesheets to the top. It was a close-run thing, however, for the Ferrari man had McLaren's Lewis Hamilton snapping at his heels - and neither proved quite fast enough to overhaul either of the top from the opening 90 minutes.

With rain returning just as the GP2 Series was completing its free practice session, the F1 drivers returned to a track officially declared wet. For the second time, there was a reluctance to venture out but, with the forecast uncertain for the remainder of the weekend, it did not take long before everyone was exploring the limits, not only of the damp surface, but also a lack of temperature not seen on previous visits to the circuit.

Keen to make up for the time lost to transmission troubles early on, Raikkonen was the first to take a serious stab at a lap time and, with the surface finally beginning to show signs of drying out again, was quickly up to speed. He eventually clocked a 1min 27.543secs best in the course of 30 laps, a total bettered only by Hamilton and Nick Heidfeld - who both logged 31 - and the hard-working Sebastien Bourdais, who made up for his lack of Istanbul Park experience by adding 32 to his morning haul of 19.

While the track time did little to move the Frenchman too far up the pecking order, Hamilton's return was good enough to get him to within 0.036secs of the world champion, providing encouraging signs for McLaren even if little can be read into Friday's relative performances. Sadly for both Raikkonen and Hamilton, however, their efforts were not sufficient to dislodge either their respective team-mates from the top of the combined leaderboard.

Felipe Massa showed just why he had won the previous two editions of the Turkish Grand Prix by setting the morning pace, and remained at the top of the pile even though he could not match his earlier 1min 27.323secs effort second time around. The Brazilian did, however, set the third fastest time of the afternoon, despite a couple of moments, coming in ahead of David Coulthard and Heikki Kovalainen.

The Finn had been Massa's closest challenger in the first session, and was only half a second off his previous best in the second, but that was enough to drop him behind the flying Coulthard, who is expected to have been on a qualifying set-up to achieve the 1min 27.763secs lap he posted after lunch.

Kovalainen, who showed no ill-effects of his Barcelona shunt, will empathise with the Scot's team-mate, Mark Webber, however, for the Australian suffered a big off 30 minutes into the session, bringing out the red flags while the remains of his Red Bull RB4 were cleared away. Fortunately, the Australian was unhurt in the incident, which saw the car swap ends between turns six and seven, resulting in a heavy frontal impact with the barriers. Unsurprisingly, with four laps on the board, Webber was only 19th fastest on the day.

Coulthard's afternoon time was good enough for fifth overall, however, moving the Scot ahead of expected frontrunners Fernando Alonso and Robert Kubica. The Spaniard had to rely on his morning time for sixth spot, while Kubica found nearly a second between sessions to move up into seventh overall. Jarno Trulli, Kazuki Nakajima and the second BMW Sauber of Nick Heidfeld completed the top ten for the day.

Nico Rosberg could also have featured had he not had his best time scrubbed for taking a short-cut, while another famous 'son of', Nelson Piquet Jr had to settle for 16th on the combined sheet after failing to improve on his morning's 1min 29.082secs effort and seeing others leap-frog above him.

Jenson Button was eleventh fastest overall for Honda, but Rubens Barrichello suffered a similar fate to Piquet as he slipped from eighth to 18th by the end of the afternoon. Neither was as unhappy as Adrian Sutil, however, who was restricted to just nine laps after lunch by mechanical problems and had to prop up the timesheets from 20th position. Force India team-mate Giancarlo Fisichella was a little better off, in 14th, but faces a grid penalty for running the red light at the start of morning practice.