Sebastian Vettel said a lack of grip saw him finish a second off the pace of Mercedes during second practice for the Brazilian Grand Prix.

Vettel was 0.6s off Lewis Hamilton in first practice, but dropped to nearly a second off Nico Rosberg in second practice. Speaking to reporters after the session, Vettel joked he was urgently looking for something ... or someone ... called grip.

"If you see him walking around here, then tell him to come to our garage and stick to our car," he said. "Everyone is sliding a lot, especially on the long runs, so I'll give you my number later and if you see the guy called Grip, you'll just pass on my number now."

However, Vettel is confident he will be able to close the gap to Mercedes ahead of qualifying on Saturday.

"It is a second too much, we didn't get the best timing for our run, it was tricky for everyone, a couple of drops of rain, but overall, I think it was a difficult day. We can still improve. Looking forward to doing the analysis now and hopefully tomorrow we can do a step forward.

"I think everyone is struggling a lot on the tyres, I think they are quite tricky to work with. I think it's slippery for everyone. I tried to do the best I could, maybe it wasn't quick enough. I think we can improve for tomorrow, the car is moving around quite a lot."