Mark Webber leads in final practice

2011 Singapore GP third practice

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Mark Webber topped the times at the end of third practice. He was quickest by two hundredths of a second, ahead of Jenson Button and Sebastian Vettel.

Both McLaren drivers went into the final session with new rear wings. Jenson Button was fastest during the first half of the session – half a second ahead of Fernando Alonso, who was closely followed by Mark Webber.

Sebastian Vettel managed a 1’47.737 for first on his fifth lap. He promptly improved that by four-tenths of a second.

Michael Schumacher set a 1’47.837 for second on super softs on his ninth lap. His teammate was at one point more than three seconds slower – with the floor of his Mercedes dragging on the way to Memorial corner, sending up a lot of sparks – but managed second on a new set of super softs, eight-tenths off the pace and six-thousandths faster than Schumacher with just 10 minutes of the session to go.

Fernando Alonso was the first to set a time in the 1’46s on his first run on new super softs, but his time was promptly bettered by Jenson Button who managed a 1’46.108.

Mark Webber then managed a 1’46.081 to go top. It looked as if his teammate might better this on the last lap but Vettel decided to abort his last run and Webber ended the session in the lead.

Lewis Hamilton struggled, spending most of the session in 18th and eight seconds off the pace. He managed fifth on his first lap on new super softs and stayed fifth.

Both Bruno Senna and Vitaly Petrov struggled down in 17th and 16th for Renault. They had expected a tough time at this track.

Lotus made a number of changes to both cars from yesterday, including the ride heights, front wing, camber and anti-roll bars. These adjustments will stay for qualifying and the race. They ended the session 19th and 22nd.

The two slowest drivers during most of the session were the Toro Rossos, after Sebastien Buemi’s incident with the barrier at turn 21 and Jaime Alguersuari’s technical problems yesterday. They ended FP3 in 12th and 18th.

Several kerbs that had been removed between first and second practice yesterday have been restored and there was repeat of the problems that delayed FP1 by half an hour as kerbs were repaired at the exit of several corners.

Pos.CarDriverCarBest lapGap
12Mark WebberRed Bull-Renault1’46.08115
24Jenson ButtonMcLaren-Mercedes1’46.1080.02717
31Sebastian VettelRed Bull-Renault1’46.3450.26414
45Fernando AlonsoFerrari1’46.3960.31514
53Lewis HamiltonMcLaren-Mercedes1’46.9360.85520
68Nico RosbergMercedes1’47.8311.75014
77Michael SchumacherMercedes1’47.8371.75612
86Felipe MassaFerrari1’48.7112.63012
916Kamui KobayashiSauber-Ferrari1’49.0572.97615
1014Adrian SutilForce India-Mercedes1’49.3043.22316
1117Sergio PerezSauber-Ferrari1’49.5833.50217
1218Sebastien BuemiToro Rosso-Ferrari1’49.6793.59818
1315Paul di RestaForce India-Mercedes1’49.8163.73518
1412Pastor MaldonadoWilliams-Cosworth1’49.8513.77017
1511Rubens BarrichelloWilliams-Cosworth1’50.1894.10815
1610Vitaly PetrovRenault1’50.2294.14815
179Bruno SennaRenault1’50.5234.44214
1819Jaime AlguersuariToro Rosso-Ferrari1’50.5474.46617
1920Heikki KovalainenLotus-Renault1’52.5106.42917
2025Jerome D’AmbrosioVirgin-Cosworth1’52.6976.61619
2122Daniel RicciardoHRT-Cosworth1’53.7287.64717
2221Jarno TrulliLotus-Renault1’53.8237.74218
2324Timo GlockVirgin-Cosworth1’53.8297.74816
2423Vitantonio LiuzziHRT-Cosworth1’55.2039.12217

2011 Singapore Grand Prix

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    12 comments on “Mark Webber leads in final practice”

    1. It should be very interesting qualifying. I thought Alonso and Vettel would be two big gun but Webber and Button did very well. but Massa and Hamilton are disappointing. What’s wrong with them?

    2. I was hoping Lotus would be a bit faster with all new updates and changes, but they are still way behind. Small disappointment there.

    3. Button’s lap was impressive and I’m looking forward to seeing what he can accomplish during qualifying.

      Hamilton seemed to damage his diffuser/floor pretty badly for the second time this weekend riding the kerbs hard on the exit of turn 7, tearing large parts from the underside of his car.

      Hopefully Mclaren have replacement parts and enough time to fix that for qualifying as presumably the damage will be costing him aero performance.

    4. What happened to Lewis? Why was he so slow for so many lafs?

      1. I think he was suffered from wrong setup but I don’t know it was either when he tried super soft.

    5. I think my qualifying time guess of 1:44.5 may have been slightly over optimistic

      1. Vettel proves me wrong, as usual :(

        1. lol

    6. Noticed that everyone from Ricciardo down are outside of the 107% time for this session (1:53.506) non qualifiers maybe?

      1. Different tyres will help them in Q1.

    7. Ricciardo must have been really wringing the neck of that car!

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