» Malaysian GP 3rd Practice: Webber ends Hamilton’s domination

The Red Bull team has brought the fight right to McLaren in the third and final practice session before this afternoon’s all-important qualifying session ahead of Sunday’s Malaysian Grand Prix.

After the disappointment of a Renault engine failure in the second practice session on Friday, Webber has pounced back to set the quickest tie of the weekend thus far, edging out Lewis Hamilton from making it a clean sweep at the top of the practice session timesheets.

Many eyes were on the weather radars during the 1-hour practice session that started at 1pm local time, with many predicting that rain would fall midway through the session.

With the threat of rain growing more likely, many teams opted to run their soft tyres early in the session, but the relative lack of grip coupled with the rain not falling at all meant their efforts were fruitless.

It was only in the second half of the session that the timesheets really began to light up, with Lewis Hamilton again taking over the mantle with 25 minutes still to run, knocking Fernando Alonso’s Ferrari off top spot.

It looked like Lewis would remain on top of the timing monitors for the remainder of the session, until Red Bull pulled some quick times out of the bag in the final three minutes of the session when performing their qualifying simulations.

Webber lapped quickest with a 1:33.542, and it looked like Vettel would beat his Australian team-mate’s time until he encountered traffic in the final sector. That he managed a time just under 0.05s slower was itself very impressive.

Alonso lapped fourth-quickest after his Ferrari finally found some pace in qualifying trim, and he finished ahead of Michael Schumacher, who headed his Mercedes GP team-mate Nico Rosberg for the first time this weekend. Completing the top-ten were Jenson Button, Felipe Massa, Rubens Barrichello (who also found pace in his Williams) and Robert Kubica.

It was a trouble-free session for most drivers, but a couple still had a few hair-raising moments. Heikki Kovalainen damaged his front wing and lost a bargeboard on the saw-toothed kerbs; Vitaly Petrov took a trip through the kitty litter, Vettel lodged debris in his front wing and Jaime Alguersuari had a spin in his Toro Rosso.

Assuming a dry qualifying session, it would look like a tight fight between the McLarens and Red Bulls, with Mercedes GP probably third-quickest of the teams.

But rain looks set to definitely hit the circuit, making the three knockout sessions very interesting. There will definitely be some losers in qualifying, and some of the lower teams might spring a few surprises! I can’t wait!

2010 Malaysian GP Practice 3 Session Times:

	Driver	Team	Time	Laps
1.	Mark Webber	Red Bull Renault	1:33.542	17
2.	Lewis Hamilton	McLaren Mercedes	+ 0.017	14
3.	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull Renault	+ 0.045	17
4.	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	+ 0.209	19
5.	Michael Schumacher	Mercedes GP	+ 0.450	15
6.	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes GP	+ 0.548	13
7.	Jenson Button	McLaren Mercedes	+ 0.581	16
8.	Felipe Massa	Ferrari	+ 0.632	15
9.	Rubens Barrichello	Williams Cosworth	+ 0.998	13
10.	Robert Kubica	Renault	+ 1.007	17
11.	Adrian Sutil	Force India Mercedes	+ 1.081	11
12.	Sébastien Buemi	Toro Rosso Ferrari	+ 1.131	19
13.	Nico Hülkenberg	Williams Cosworth	+ 1.340	13
14.	Vitantonio Liuzzi	Force India Mercedes	+ 1.415	16
15.	Jaime Alguersuari	Toro Rosso Ferrari	+ 1.484	16
16.	Vitaly Petrov	Renault	+ 1.534	17
17.	Pedro de la Rosa	Sauber Ferrari	+ 1.935	18
18.	Kamui Kobayashi	Sauber Ferrari	+ 2.862	19
19.	Timo Glock	Virgin Racing Cosworth	+ 3.757	15
20.	Jarno Trulli	Lotus Cosworth	+ 3.827	16
21.	Heikki Kovalainen	Lotus Cosworth	+ 4.619	18
22.	Lucas di Grassi	Virgin Racing Cosworth	+ 5.241	13
23.	Bruno Senna	HRT Cosworth	+ 6.326	19
24.	Karun Chandhok	HRT Cosworth	+ 6.353	16