Trulli edges Buemi in dry final practice
Date published : 03 Oct 2009 - 04:12:12
Jarno Trulli pipped a highly impressive Sebastien Buemi to the fastest time in the first dry-weather session of the weekend at Suzuka on Saturday morning, giving Toyota encouragement about its chances for its home Japanese event.After the opening day of Formula 1's return to the famous track was largely washed out by heavy rain, the weather had gone full circle by Saturday morning and warm and sunny conditions were a welcome sight for teams who all unsurprisingly used the hour-long session to the maximum as they tried to find competitive set-ups for their cars ahead of qualifying.Toro Rosso rookie Buemi who was one of several drivers on the grid who had never sampled the figure-of-eight circuit before Friday s wet practice sessions appeared to get his car dialled into the 3.6-mile circuit quicker than anyone as he dominated much of the session.However, with his final flying lap, Suzuka veteran Trulli stopped the clocks on 1m31.709s in his Toyota TF109 to edge out the Swiss youngster by a mere 0.062s.Nico Rosberg also made a sizeable late improvement to take third for Williams albeit surely carrying more fuel being as he was 0.634s back with Red Bull Racing title hopeful and pre-race favourite Sebastian Vettel dropping from second to fourth as a result of Trulli and Rosberg s respective improvements.Having struggled in high downforce conditions at Singapore seven days ago, Ferrari and Force India both enjoyed encouraging mornings with Kimi Raikkonen claiming fifth for the former after running strongly throughout and Friday s wet pacesetter Adrian Sutil just behind as Force India showed its VJM02 could be back towards the sharp end here.Brawn s title-chasing duo of Rubens Barrichello and Jenson Button both completed solid, trouble-free sessions to slot into seventh and ninth respectively, the pair having sat out all of the running in Friday s second rain-hit practice.Mark Webber, meanwhile, made the one major mistake of the session as he crashed out at the second Degner corner with just six minutes remaining, giving his RBR team plenty of repairs to complete to the front-end of his RB5 in the two hours before qualifying starts. The Australian s crash meant he lost several extra minutes of crucial track time with dry-weather laps before qualifying having been put at a premium after Friday s miserable conditions. Indeed points leader Button had earlier provided a clear example of how keen drivers were keen to press on with some dry-weather work when while trying to pass STR s Jaime Alguersuari at the hairpin on his first out lap.However, in his haste the Briton only succeed in tangling with the rookie, with the mild contact damaging his BGP 001 s front wing meaning he had to make an immediate return to the pit lane for a new one. Trulli had no such problems in the early laps and quickly established himself as the initial man to beat around the tortuous track setting three successive quick laps to move the early benchmark from 1m34.478s to 1m33.258s.However, Buemi soon served notice of his intentions for the hour when, after 20 minutes he shaved five hundredths of a second off the Toyota s best effort, before quickly upping his own pace to reel off a 1m32.815s and then 1m32.240s.After drivers had completed their initial early longer runs, Buemi returned and went faster still the Swiss first just narrowly dipping into the 1m31s before pulling a full 0.6s clear of the chasing pack on a 1m31.771s.As the session wound down towards its conclusion, and drivers switched to the softer compound rubber, Buemi s time proved significantly out of reach for everyone, before Trulli produced his 1m31.709s on his final run.STR s nevertheless impressive morning was underlined by Alguersuari who completed the top-10 runners, the Spanish rookie proving quicker than both BMWs, Renaults and the second Toyota of Timo Glock, who returned to his TF109 return following the heavy cold and fever that saw Kamui Kobayashi deputise for him on Friday.Runaway Singapore winner Lewis Hamilton, meanwhile, finished down in 16th after seeming to struggle with the handling of his McLaren on his first dry-weather laps around Suzuka. While Webber s accident proved to be the session s one major incident, the fact drivers were forced to push unusually hard on a Saturday morning due to the lack of previous dry running meant several others had spins or off-track moments. McLaren s Heikki Kovalainen, who ended the session a solid eighth, was one to short-cut the final chicane, while Romain Grosjean (11th) later half-spun there after getting out of shape under braking in his Renault.Nick Heidfeld had the only other spin of note when the BMW man put his right-rear wheel on the grass as he approached the hairpin.Japanese Grand Prix free practice session three 1. TRULLI Toyota 1m31.709s2. BUEMI Toro Rosso 1m31.771s3. ROSBERG Williams 1m32.343s4. VETTEL Toro Rosso 1m32.414s5. RAIKKONEN Ferrari 1m32.445s6. SUTIL Force India 1m32.467s7. BARRICHELLO Brawn 1m32.488s8. KOVALAINEN McLaren 1m32.546s9. BUTTON Brawn 1m32.668s10. ALGUERSUARI Toro Rosso 1m32.689s11. GROSJEAN Renault 1m32.717s12. HEIDFELD BMW 1m32.736s13. ALONSO Renault 1m32.742s14. GLOCK Toyota 1m32.749s15. NAKAJIMA Williams 1m32.752s16. HAMILTON McLaren 1m32.789s17. KUBICA BMW 1m32.848s18. FISICHELLA Ferrari 1m32.878s19. WEBBER Red Bull 1m32.930s20. LIUZZI Force India 1m33.167s
