Mercedes restored order at the top in the second practice session as Nico Rosberg edged out Lewis Hamilton as quickest of all.
The championship leader clocked a 1:26.225 on his low-fuel run, a mini margin of over half a tenth ahead of team-mate Hamilton, whose session was curtailed by a misfiring car but recovered to get some running in the final half hour.
Ferrari showed some encouraging pace in front of the tifosi as Kimi Raikkonen popped up in third, a few tenths ahead of than Fernando Alonso in fourth, with Alonso leaving a bit of lap time on the table on his fastest lap.
Fifth was Valterri Bottas in the Williams as the team got back up to speed after spending the first session evaluating aero packages, closely followed by McLaren’s Jenson Button and Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel, who also had time in the bag with an error at the Parabolica corner both Button and Vettel setting identical times, their team-mates Kevin Magnussen and Daniel Ricciardo ending the session in eighth and tenth respectively, sandwiched by the other Williams of Felipe Massa in nineth.
Just outside of the top ten were Force India not being where they expected to be, over eighth tenths of a second adrift of Mercedes as Sergio Perez finished in eleventh and Nico Hulkenberg in twelfth, fractionally faster than Daniil Kvyat, a further four tenths behind in fourteenth was Sauber’s Esteban Gutierrez ahead of the other Toro Rosso driver Jean-Eric Vergne. While Gutierrez’ team-mate Adrian Sutil was behind them in sixteenth having returned to action after Giedo van Der Garde took over his car for the first session.
Occupying the bottom order was Marussia rounding up the session among the struggling Lotus pair, with Bianchi leading the quadruple ahead of Pastor Maldonado, team-mate Max Chilton and Romain Grosjean, who like Sutil in the first session, had given up his car to reserve driver Charles Pic and had multiple off-track excursions as the Frenchman begun his race weekend.
Following similiarly in Grosjean’s footsteps was Kamui Kobayashi, who was back in the Caterham for the first time since the Hungarian Grand Prix as he was sidelined for Andre Lotterer for the Belgian Grand Prix, and was quickly on the pace of his team-mate Marcus Ericsson, who was a tenth behind Kobayashi in the sister Caterham.
| # | Driver | Team | Time | Gap | Laps | |
| 1 | Nico Rosberg | Mercedes | 1:26.225 | 41 | ||
| 2 | Lewis Hamilton | Mercedes | 1:26.286 | 0.061 | 16 | |
| 3 | Kimi Raikkonen | Ferrari | 1:26.331 | 0.106 | 31 | |
| 4 | Fernando Alonso | Ferrari | 1:26.565 | 0.340 | 26 | |
| 5 | Valterri Bottas | Williams | 1:26.758 | 0.533 | 34 | |
| 6 | Jenson Button | McLaren | 1:26.762 | 0.537 | 34 | |
| 7 | Sebastian Vettel | Red Bull | 1:26.762 | 0.537 | 27 | |
| 8 | Kevin Magnussen | McLaren | 1:26.881 | 0.656 | 44 | |
| 9 | Felipe Massa | Williams | 1:26.935 | 0.710 | 33 | |
| 10 | Daniel Ricciardo | Red Bull | 1:26.992 | 0.767 | 37 | |
| 11 | Sergio Perez | Force India | 1:27.079 | 0.854 | 42 | |
| 12 | Nico Hulkenberg | Force India | 1:27.227 | 1.002 | 39 | |
| 13 | Daniil Kvyat | Toro Rosso | 1:27.476 | 1.251 | 37 | |
| 14 | Esteban Gutierrez | Sauber | 1:27.840 | 1.615 | 33 | |
| 15 | Jean-Eric Vergne | Toro Rosso | 1:27.929 | 1.704 | 33 | |
| 16 | Adrian Sutil | Sauber | 1:28.029 | 1.804 | 35 | |
| 17 | Jules Bianchi | Marussia | 1:28.659 | 2.434 | 34 | |
| 18 | Pastor Maldonado | Lotus | 1:28.700 | 2.475 | 42 | |
| 19 | Max Chilton | Marussia | 1:28.786 | 2.561 | 29 | |
| 20 | Romain Grosjean | Lotus | 1:29.085 | 2.860 | 29 | |
| 21 | Kamui Kobayashi | Caterham | 1:29.178 | 2.953 | 32 | |
| 22 | Marcus Ericsson | Caterham | 1:29.275 | 3.050 | 37 |
