Final practice - Webber puts Red Bull ahead in Hungary 28 Jul 2012
Red Bull jumped to the top of the timesheets in the final free practice session in Budapest on Saturday morning, as Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel sandwiched Lewis Hamilton’s McLaren.
Webber lapped in 1m 21.550s on the soft Pirelli, with Vettel on 1m 21.671s. When they did that Hamilton had been fastest in 1m 21.706s on the medium tyre, but his subsequent switch to the soft yielded only a small improvement, to 1m 21.643s as he met traffic thereafter.
Behind them, Bruno Senna was a surprise fourth for Williams with 1m 21.876s, ahead of Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso on 1m 21.884s. Kimi Raikkonen completed the top six on 1m 21.953s for Lotus.
The next batch of 12 cars was within eight-tenths of a second of one another. It was led by Lotus’s Romain Grosjean with 1m 22.110s, from Ferrari’s Felipe Massa on 1m 22.136s, Force India’s Paul di Resta on 1m 22.191s, a troubled Jenson Button who complained of wheel locking and heavy steering on his McLaren on his way to 1m 22.233s and Williams’ Pastor Maldonado on 1m 22.381s.
Then came Sauber’s Kamui Kobayashi on 1m 22.387s, Toro Rosso’s Jean-Eric Vergne on 1m 22.492s, Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg on 1m 22.530s, Sauber’s Sergio Perez on 1m 22.597s, Toro Rosso’s Daniel Ricciardo on 1m 22.716s, Mercedes’ Michael Schumacher on 1m 22.868s and team mate Nico Rosberg on 1m 22.931s.
Heikki Kovalainen was back ahead of Vitaly Petrov at Caterham, 1m 24.086s to 1m 24.547s, while the Marussias of Charles Pic and Timo Glock moved clear of the HRTs of Pedro de la Rosa and Narain Karthikeyan. The former duo lapped in 1m 25.224s to 1m 25.497s, the latter 1m 26.785s to 1m 26.898s.
There were several off-track moments, but one of them serious as drivers merely explored run-off areas.
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