Lewis Hamilton remained calm despite another setback with his car on Friday after he topped the times in second practice for Sunday’s British Grand Prix.

The 29-year-old Briton, who is bidding to add a second home triumph to his victory of 2008, clocked the fastest lap of the afternoon, but was then left stranded on track with engine problems.

He had outpaced Mercedes team-mate and championship leader German Nico Rosberg with a best lap of 1min 34.508sec to emerge fastest by 0.228sec on a warm and blustery day at Silverstone.

“I’m not frustrated,” said Hamilton, who missed the last half hour of the session. “You know, it just happened, but, I just don’t know why it keeps happening to my car so much.”

In a later comment on his Twitter account, he added: “When you step back and look, things are positive – it’s not the race and we can learn from this.”

Hamilton lies second in the title race, 29 points behind Rosberg, and has said he needs to win on Sunday to regain momentum in their duel.

He has twice suffered mechanical failures and retirements in races, but Rosberg has finished every race.

Two-time champion Fernando Alonso of Spain steered his Ferrari to third fastest time, ahead of the two Red Bulls of Australian Daniel Ricciardo and German defending four-time champion Sebastian Vettel.

They were both more than a second behind on one lap pace but showed improvements in relative competitive speed on the long runs in the latter stages of the afternoon session.

Hamilton managed only 14 laps compared to Rosberg’s 35, but will have access to the championship leader’s data.

Finn Valtteri Bottas was sixth fastest for Williams – having missed the morning session when his car was run by Susie Wolff, the first woman to take part in a Grand Prix for 22 years.

Wolff managed just three laps before engine trouble.

Seven fastest was McLaren’s Jenson Button followed by Danish teammate Kevin Magnussen, Kimi Raikkonen of Ferrari and 10th placed Frenchman Jean-Eric Vergne of Toro Rosso.

Bottas surviving an engine explosion after pulling his car into the Williams garage.