Massa pips Alonso as Ferrari fight back in final practice 04 Aug 2007
Ferrari and McLaren continued to slog it out at the Hungaroring on Saturday morning, with Felipe Massa setting the fastest time ahead of Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton and Nick Heidfeld pushing his BMW Sauber ahead of Kimi Raikkonen for fourth.
Ferrari’s Massa took the fastest time away from Alonso close to the end of the hour, with a lap of 1m 20.183s which compared to Raikkonen’s 2006 pole time of 1m 19.599s.
Alonso lapped his McLaren in 1m 20.414s, while his team mate Hamilton improved to 1m 20.461s in the final quarter hour. Heidfeld’s session wasn’t without incident as he was off the road twice, but his 1m 20.565s beat Raikkonen’s 1m 20.741s.
Right behind them, Nico Rosberg again showed strongly for Williams with 1m 20.868s, then came the Toyotas of Jarno Trulli on 1m 20.878s and Ralf Schumacher on 1m 20.933s.
Just to underline how close things were, the next eight cars were covered by a second. Mark Webber was ninth on 1m 21.220s for Red Bull, ahead of Alex Wurz in the Williams (1m 21.323s), Super Aguri’s Anthony Davidson (1m 21.501s), BMW Sauber’s Robert Kubica (1m 21.652s), Renault’s Heikki Kovalainen (1m 21.666s), Red Bull’s David Coulthard (1m 21.752s), Takuma Sato in the second Super Aguri (1m 21.839s) and Toro Rosso’s Tonio Liuzzi (1m 21.909s).
At the back, Giancarlo Fisichella was off the pace for Renault in 17th place on 1m 22.131s, ahead of Honda’s Jenson Button (1m 22.202s), Toro Rosso’s Sebastian Vettel (1m 22.394s) and Rubens Barrichello in the second Honda (1m 22.596s).
Adrian Sutil and Sakon Yamamoto did their share of autocrossing for Spyker, and this time the Japanese returnee was much closer to the German rookie, with a time of 1m 24.062s to 1m 23.560s.
Besides those mentioned, Liuzzi, Davidson, Trulli, Kovalainen, Raikkonen and Hamilton all had minor off-course moments.
The scene is now set for qualifying, with every indication that Ferrari and McLaren will be evenly matched, and that BMW Sauber might just spring a surprise depending on their chosen race strategy.
