» Spanish GP 3rd Practice: Vettel and Red Bull on top again

Red Bull Racing looks set to clean up at this weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix, after Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber staged another 1-2 in the third and final practice session before this afternoon’s qualifying.

Vettel headed the timesheets by a considerable margin of over 0.7s to his team-mate, with the McLarens of Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button winding up third- and fourth-quickest overall.

Should conditions remain dry for both qualifying and the race – which seems unlikely given the weather forecasts – then a whitewash for the Milton Keynes team seems inevitable.

Despite overnight rain, weather conditions seem to have improved from yesterday, with bright sunshine and 18ºC (64°F) temperatures ensuring the local fans were kept comfortable as they watched their three native representatives out on track.

The session was largely incident-free, save for an unexpected red flag 20 minutes into the one-hour period, when both Kamui Kobayashi and Vitaly Petrov shot into the Turn 4 gravel trap after each ran over the still-damp kerbing. While Kobayashi was able to limp his Sauber out of the kitty litter with limited damage, it was more terminal for Petrov’s Renault, which suffered considerable front- and rear-end damage after he clobbered the tyre barriers en route to the scene of his accident.

The green flags came out with half an hour’s running still to go, and everyone ran reliably until Adrian Sutil’s Force India slowed and pulled off at the exit of the Campsa corner.

For the rest of the runners, Michael Schumacher’s promising weekend continued with a solid run to fifth overall of the timesheets, and again ahead of team-mate Nico Rosberg for the third session running.

The Ferraris of Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso sandwiched the seventh-placed Rosberg on the timesheets.

2010 Spanish GP Practice 3 Session Times:

	Driver	Team	Time	Laps
1.	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull Renault	1:20.528	15
2.	Mark Webber	Red Bull Renault	+ 0.704	11
3.	Lewis Hamilton	McLaren Mercedes	+ 0.820	14
4.	Jenson Button	McLaren Mercedes	+ 0.848	16
5.	Michael Schumacher	Mercedes GP	+ 1.055	14
6.	Felipe Massa	Ferrari	+ 1.221	16
7.	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes GP	+ 1.485	14
8.	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	+ 1.63	15
9.	Robert Kubica	Renault	+ 1.714	20
10.	Adrian Sutil	Force India Mercedes	+ 1.849	12
11.	Sébastien Buemi	Toro Rosso Ferrari	+ 1.872	18
12.	Kamui Kobayashi	Sauber Ferrari	+ 1.884	11
13.	Pedro de la Rosa	Sauber Ferrari	+ 1.999	20
14.	Nico Hülkenberg	Williams Cosworth	+ 2.106	16
15.	Jaime Alguersuari	Toro Rosso Ferrari	+ 2.398	20
16.	Rubens Barrichello	Williams Cosworth	+ 2.425	16
17.	Vitantonio Liuzzi	Force India Mercedes	+ 3.069	12
18.	Vitaly Petrov	Renault	+ 3.368	5
19.	Jarno Trulli	Lotus Cosworth	+ 4.082	14
20.	Heikki Kovalainen	Lotus Cosworth	+ 4.217	11
21.	Timo Glock	Virgin Racing Cosworth	+ 5.194	15
22.	Lucas di Grassi	Virgin Racing Cosworth	+ 5.327	14
23.	Karun Chandhok	HRT Cosworth	+ 6.083	18
24.	Bruno Senna	HRT Cosworth	+ 9.718	6