Switching to the faster soft tyre for runs in FP2, Hamilton again comfortably had the edge by 0.443sec over Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen.
Hamilton left it fashionably late before making his entrance, with his best time set on his only lap on the faster soft tyres moments before the rain came down.
None of it seemed to make sense: Jenson Button started the first session as the fastest car in the McLaren Mercedes, setting his fastest time on the hard tires, which raises the question of how well he will do when racing on the faster soft tires.
Button regained the advantage by sticking with the faster soft tyres for the middle stint while the Spaniard switched to the mediums.
The yawning time gap between Hamilton and Rosberg - whose session had earlier been affected by braking problems - may not be a true reflection of their pace, however, as the German's first lap on the faster soft tyres was compromised.
The proposed benefits include restoration of length, indirect reduction in the tubercle of Chaput (anterolateral) and Volkmann (posterolateral) tibial fragments in the case of distal fibula fractures, and a faster soft tissue recovery.
Vettel fought through the field after a late stop for the faster soft tyre, gaining seven places as a result after a pit-lane start and a strategy that required patience and care to do two long stints on medium tyres before his final push.
When it came to it, however, Rosberg was unable to muster the pace to unseat Vettel, and instead came under threat from Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo, who was on the faster soft-compound tyre.
High workload stress has been proven to have a significant impact on the performance of speech recognition systems, with speech under workload sounding faster, softer, or louder than neutral speech [9, 10].
