Final practice - Webber wows home crowd 27 Mar 2010
Mark Webber owned Albert Park on Saturday afternoon in the final practice for his home race, lapping his Red Bull in 1m 24.719s to head off the challenges of Bahrain winner Fernando Alonso (1m 24.929s) in the Ferrari and the revitalised Michael Schumacher (1m 24.963s) for Mercedes.
In a session that remained dry, they were the pacesetters for most of the way.
Sebastian Vettel was fourth with 1m 25.122s in the second Red Bull, with Mercedes’ Nico Rosberg overshadowed by his illustrious team mate and left fifth with 1m 25.366s. Jenson Button improved to sixth late in the session, his 1m 25.399s acing McLaren team mate Lewis Hamilton’s 1m 25.505s. Adrian Sutil was right on the 2008 champion’s tail for Force India with 1m 25.525s, then Ferrari’s Felipe Massa (1m 25.549s) and Tonio Liuzzi (1m 25.782s) in the second Force India rounded out the top 10.
Rubens Barrichello was again Williams’ pacesetter on 1m 25.852s for 11th. Sebastien Buemi couldn’t break 1m 26s and was 12th for Toro Rosso on 1m 26.104s, chased by Robert Kubica who was a disappointing 13th for Renault on 1m 26.184s. Team mate Vitoly Petrov ran well early on, but fell to 16th with 1m 26.661s. In between the two Renault pilots, Kamui Kobayashi lapped his BMW Sauber in 1m 26.275s for 14th ahead of Jaime Alguersuari’s Toro Rosso on 1m 26.368s, with Williams’ Nico Hulkenberg on 1m 26.804s and BMW Sauber’s Pedro de la Rosa on 1m 26.818s completing the ‘established’ teams runners.’
Lotus once again emerged top dog in the newcomers’ category, with Heikki Kovalainen 19th in 1m 29.539s from team mate Jarno Trulli (1m 29.800s), Virgin’s Lucas di Grassi was 21st on 1m 30.800s and team mate Timo Glock next on 1m 31.114s. The HRTs were again in trouble, both stopping with mechanical problems after Karun Chandhok had lapped his in 1m 34.334s and Bruno Senna in 1m 36.649s.
It was a remarkably incident-free session that sets up some interesting scenarios for qualifying.
