Hamilton quickest again

Hamilton improved his best time to a minute 34.175 seconds to outpace the Red Bull of Sebastian Vettel while Nico Rosberg was third for Mercedes, continuing his impressive form from the opening session.

Australian race winner Jenson Button was fourth quickest ahead of Michael Schumacher, with the top five drivers the only ones to break the 1:35s marker during the session.

Robert Kubica was sixth quickest for Renault ahead of Fernando Alonso, who spent much of the session running heavy on fuel and only moved up into the top 10 in the closing stages.

Sebastien Buemi, Vitaly Petrov and Adrian Sutil rounded out the top ten - the latter almost matching his time from the morning session identically.

Elsewhere, a fuel-laden Felipe Massa struggled down in 15th place but that was better than Mark Webber, who hit apparent engine problems with his Red Bull that saw him cost to a stop in the gravel at turn nine.

A number of drivers also briefly left the circuit - including Toro Rosso duo Sebastien Buemi and Jaime Alguersuari - although there were no major incidents.

With test drivers have been on track during FP1, Tonio Liuzzi was 12th as he got back behind the wheel of his Force India, while Heikki Kovalainen finished just behind Lotus team-mate Jarno Trulli in 19th.

The top six on the combined times for the day proved to be the same as in the second session, with Webber ending up seventh overall thanks to his time from the morning ahead of Alonso, Buemi and Petrov.