Impressive Webber moves to the front
Date published : 27 Mar 2010 - 04:07:14
Crowd favourite Mark Webber set himself up for a shot at a first pole position at his home Australian Grand Prix by impressively setting the pace in final practice.The 33-year-old underlined Red Bull's apparent superiority over a single lap by outpacing Ferrari's Fernando Alonso by 0.201s following a series of fast laps towards the end of the Saturday morning session in Melbourne, which culminated in a 1m24.719s.Mercedes was the third-quickest team thanks to Michael Schumacher, the four-time Albert Park winner just 0.244s off the pace as his single-lap speed continues to get back to its best.Webber's team-mate Sebastian Vettel was a big 0.4s off the sister car's pace in fourth but the German is likely to move up several gears in qualifying with Nico Rosberg a similar amount of time adrift of his team-mate Schumacher.Friday pacesetter McLaren slipped from the head of the order to sixth and seventh, world champion Jenson Button this time ahead of Lewis Hamilton the latter back on track following his misdemeanour in his Mercedes road car on the local roads last night. With no sign of the rain that complicated teams' running towards the end of the opening day, Renault's Vitaly Petrov and Felipe Massa initially traded fastest times on Saturday morning as drivers began customary longer runs, the Ferrari ace eventually winning that duel at the third attempt with a lap of 1m26.766s.Rosberg and then Vettel then each briefly moved ahead, before Friday pacesetter Hamilton became the first man to dip below the 1m26s mark, beating his benchmark from the opening day in the process, with a lap of 1m25.706s.Bahrain winner Alonso's early attempts at a quick lap were hampered by traffic but the early 2010 championship leader finally moved to the front with 18 minutes remaining as he hustled his F10 to a 1m25.559s following changes to its ride height and rear suspension.Schumacher has looked both quicker, and closer to his old aggressive self, in the W01 at Albert Park and had his car nicely hooked up through the first two sectors in particularly, the seven-time champion eventually hitting the head of the timesheet on 1m25.494s.Webber, however, had plenty more speed to exploit from his RB6 and was about to show it in the final 15 minutes of the session.After initially claiming top spot with a lap almost two tenths of a second quicker than Schumacher on the hard tyres, he uncorked a stunning 1m24.794s to really lay down a marker before improving slightly again two laps later, despite his car being unsettled by slower cars ahead through the final corner, to seal the session's fastest time.Alonso and Schumacher both improved on their final runs, but neither had the speed in the final sector to trouble Webber.Behind the Australian the usual front-running suspects shuffled into place Massa the only one of the top four teams' drivers slightly out of position in ninth, the Brazilian seemingly not quite yet entirely happy with the set-up of his F10.Force India continues to show good pace, meanwhile, as Adrian Sutil and Tonio Liuzzi sandwiched Massa in eighth and 10th, the former just 0.8s off Webber.Further back and, while Virgin clocked up a much-needed total of 30 laps during the one-hour session following its Friday reliability woes, Hispania's troubles continued as both its cars once more ran into trouble.First, Bruno Senna lost power coming out of the first corner at the start of his eighth lap before eventually crawling to an eventual stop on the outside of the circuit.The sister car of Karun Chandhok then suffered the same fate in the closing minutes, his Cosworth-powered HRT chassis grinding to a halt on the outside of turn six.Australian GP free practice session three times1 WEBBER Red Bull 1m24.719s 2 ALONSO Ferrari 1m24.929s3 SCHUMACHER Mercedes 1m24.963s4 VETTEL Red Bull 1m25.122s5 ROSBERG Mercedes 1m25.366s6 BUTTON McLaren 1m25.399s7 HAMILTON McLaren 1m25.505s8 SUTIL Force India 1m25.525s9 MASSA Ferrari 1m25.549s10 LIUZZI Force India 1m25.782s11 BARRICHELLO Williams 1m25.852s12 BUEMI Toro Rosso 1m26.104s13 KUBICA Renault 1m26.184s14 KOBAYASHI Sauber 1m26.275s15 ALGUERSUARI Toro Rosso 1m26.368s16 PETROV Renault 1m26.661s17 HULKENBERG Williams 1m26.804s18 DE LA ROSA Sauber 1m26.818s19 KOVALAINEN Lotus 1m29.539s20 TRULLI Lotus 1m29.800s21 DI GRASSI Virgin 1m30.800s22 GLOCK Virgin 1m31.114s23 CHANDHOK HRT 1m34.334s24 SENNA HRT 1m36.649s
