British GP Silverstone 2013. Practice 2: Nico Rosberg outpaces Red Bulls as Silverstone rain clears

Merc also show longer-run promise but Massa crashes again

Hamilton wasn't as comfortable with his Merc as Rosberg

Nico Rosberg: Took P2 honours for Mercedes

He may be retiring from F1 in a few months, but Mark Webber was typically on the pace around Silverstone

Nico Rosberg showed the inherent speed of Mercedes' W04 should transfer to the fast sweeps of Silverstone as he beat both Red Bull drivers to the quickest time in a dry second practice session.

After the opening morning of this year's British GP proved an effective washout after only 11 drivers completed timed laps in the miserable conditions, the rain eased, and then stopped completely, in the break between sessions and the majority of the afternoon's running was completed on slick tyres.
And it was Rosberg, polesitter at three of the last four grands prix, who ended up on top with his best medium-tyre lap of 1:32.248 some three tenths faster than the Red Bull pair of Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel.

However, far more encouragingly for Mercedes was Rosberg's consistency over his later race simulation as the German's lap times dropped by only half a second during the course of his long run on the white-marked rubber.
Paul Di Resta beat the other Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton to the honour of the fastest Briton on day one, the Scot continuing his recent strong form with the fourth-quickest effort to suggest Force India could be set for another competitive weekend.
Hamilton ended up a massive six tenths adrift of his in-form team-mate but appeared to be running to a slightly different programme earlier on, with Mercedes chief Ross Brawn making clear to Sky F1 live from the pitwall that improving the W04's race pace remained their overriding concern.
With Di Resta the only non-Mercedes/Red Bull interloper at the head of the timesheet, it was a lower-key afternoon for the other two teams expected to pose strong challenges this weekend, Ferrari and Lotus.
Fernando Alonso ended up down in tenth, some 1.2 seconds adrift of Rosberg, and his 32 laps-worth of data are the ones Ferrari's engineers have to pour over overnight after Felipe Massa completed only seven laps - and no serious running in the dry - following his fourth crash in the last three events.

The Brazilian lost the back end of his F138 rounding Stowe corner and slewed across the track into a nose-first impact with the inside tyre barrier, with Ferrari's mechanics not having enough time thereafter to complete repairs to the chassis.
Meanwhile, McLaren, fresh from confirmation that Sauber's Matt Morris was joining the team as Engineering Director, showed little in the way of an obvious step forward as Jenson Button proved their lead runner down in 11th place.
Like Ferrari, Lotus's lap times were not particularly eye-catching but there was still plenty of attention focused on Kimi Raikkonen's progress in the session as the Finn trialled the team's passive-DRS system.
The former World Champion appeared to be completing calibration work with the complex drag-reduction concept prior to his own race runs.

"The passive-DRS has been on and off the car this afternoon, with the mechanics taping it up, then untaping it to do back-to-back tests," reported Sky Sports F1's Ted Kravitz.
"It is hard to tell from the straight-line speed and lap times if it is working and I guess the decision will be made tonight based on the data."
Raikkonen had earlier been named by Red Bull boss Christian Horner as one of three drivers in contention to replace Webber for 2014, and by sheer coincidence or not, the other two men mentioned - Daniel Ricciardo and Jean-Eric Vergne - both enjoyed a rare Friday at the sharp end by taking Toro Rosso to sixth and seventh on the timesheet respectively.
Click here to view the full P2 timesheet