» Spanish GP: Vettel quickest in FP3 with one lap

The rest of the field seriously must be wondering what they have to do to get a break. Stuck in his pit garage for much of the final practice session with some apparent technical malady, Sebastian Vettel watches Mark Webber serenely cruise to go fastest, over a second quicker than anyone else. Having gone quickest in both Friday free practice sessions, could this be the weekend where Webber starts to make inroads on his team-mate, we all wonder?

With just a few minutes left on the session, Vettel’s RB7 gurgles into life and the German sets out of the pit lane on soft tyres. He’ll have one out-lap to gauge the track conditions and then he’ll have just one hot lap available to him. No problem.

Just three minutes later, and Vettel is on top of the timesheets. And Mark Webber can only blink at the outrageousness of it all…

With daylight placed third after the two Red Bulls – now unbackable favourites to lock out the front row in qualifying – Michael Schumacher finished a confidence-boosting third-fastest, and even headed the timing screens for a little bit after making an early switch to soft tyres.

The McLarens of Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button finished fourth- and fifth-fastest respectively, while Nico Rosberg Mercedes made it a quartet of Mercedes-Benz power by going sixth-fastest.

Seventh-quickest and comfortably the fastest Ferrari-powered car was Kamui Kobayashi in the heavily updated Sauber, who finished four-tenths faster than eight-quickest man Vitaly Petrov in the Renault.

The big incident of the session happened to Petrov’s team-mate Nick Heidfeld, whose R30 turned into something of a bonfire 25 minutes into the session. The German smartly pulled his car over to be attended to by the fire marshals, and the team has a huge job getting his car ready for qualifying after its right-rear corner suffered significant damage.

After being stripped of their rather high rear wings, the Ferraris were well off the pace – close to 2.5 seconds, in fact – with Fernando Alonso down in ninth and Felipe Massa two spots further behind, split by Rubens Barrichello. Alonso lost time at the end of the session when his car became stuck in sixth gear.

Behind the closely fought midfield battle between the Williams, Toro Rosso and Force India drivers, Team Lotus’ much-vaunted upgrades do not yet appear to have brought the team closer to the midfield, with Heikki Kovalainen 18th and Jarno Trulli 19th-fastest – both complained that their T128s felt loose at the rear end, despite having brand new ‘blown exhausts’ fitted for the first time.

The overall pace of the Virgin Racing and Hispania Racing cars suggests that we will be lucky to see a full complement of 24 cars for tomorrow’s race, with the quickest of the foursome (Timo Glock in 21st) lapping slower than the theoretical 107% threshold for this session. The MVR-02 has again been stripped of its new Turkey upgrades, which seemingly do not work.

2011 Spanish Grand Prix – Free Practice 3 Session Times:

	Driver	Team	Time	Laps
1.	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull Renault RB7	1:21.707	6
2.	Mark Webber	Red Bull Renault RB7	+ 0.084	17
3.	Michael Schumacher	Mercedes GP W02	+ 1.350	16
4.	Lewis Hamilton	McLaren Mercedes MP4-26	+ 1.361	13
5.	Jenson Button	McLaren Mercedes MP4-26	+ 1.507	14
6.	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes GP W02	+ 1.690	18
7.	Kamui Kobayashi	Sauber Ferrari C30	+ 1.962	17
8.	Vitaly Petrov	Renault R31	+ 2.336	18
9.	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari F150° Italia	+ 2.563	11
10.	Rubens Barrichello	Williams Cosworth FW33	+ 2.611	18
11.	Felipe Massa	Ferrari F150° Italia	+ 2.615	17
12.	Sergio Pérez	Sauber Ferrari C30	+ 2.622	19
13.	Pastor Maldonado	Williams Cosworth FW33	+ 2.692	17
14.	Sébastien Buemi	Toro Rosso Ferrari STR6	+ 2.828	16
15.	Adrian Sutil	Force India Mercedes VJM04	+ 2.988	18
16.	Jaime Alguersuari	Toro Rosso Ferrari STR6	+ 3.015	14
17.	Paul di Resta	Force India Mercedes VJM04	+ 3.516	19
18.	Heikki Kovalainen	Lotus Renault T128	+ 4.529	11
19.	Jarno Trulli	Lotus Renault T128	+ 5.293	20
20.	Timo Glock	Virgin Racing Cosworth MVR-02	+ 5.999	20
21.	Vitantonio Liuzzi	HRT F1 Cosworth F111	+ 6.623	17
22.	Jérôme d’Ambrosio	Virgin Racing Cosworth MVR-02	+ 7.350	18
23.	Nick Heidfeld	Renault R31	+ 7.493	6
24.	Narain Karthikeyan	HRT F1 Cosworth F111	+ 7.855	16