» 2012 European GP: Button quickest in FP3

Jenson Button has given every indication that his recent poor form could be a thing of the past by posting the fastest time in today’s final practice session at the European Grand Prix, ahead of this afternoon’s all-important qualifying session at the Valencia street circuit.

The Englishman took his McLaren to top spot in the dying minutes of the one-hour session, managing to find just enough clear track on his final soft-tyre qualifying simulation run to move to the top of the timesheets, beating the Lotus runners of Romain Grosjean and Kimi Räikkönen by less than one-tenth of a second.

Nico Hülkenberg and Paul di Resta continued Force India’s very impressive Valencia form into the final session by going fourth- and fifth-quickest in the session, respectively, while Sergio Pérez showed that he could also be a factor with the sixth-fastest time.

With the final hour of free running the last proper opportunity for teams and drivers to bed in their qualifying and race set-ups, track running is crucial. Disaster befell Mark Webber early on, with the Australian grinding to a halt with a mechanical drama after just four laps. He finished the session well down the order, being unable to complete any laps on the softer Pirelli tyres.

It was the siwtch to the softer compound tyre that brought about a flurry of activity in the final half-hour of the session. The two Lotus runners quickly moved to the top of the timesheets and remained there until Button’s excellent effort.

Perhaps tellingly, Sebastian Vettel was on course to claim a provisional top spot, posting the fastest sector times in the first two sectors of the lap before aborting his final run. He was also the quickest runner on the slower medium compound tyres…

All three of the practice sessions have not given a complete picture of the pecking order heading into qualifying and Sunday’s race, which is predicted to occur in baking conditions around the harbourside.

And again we saw over a dozen drivers of the field’s fastest drivers covered by less than a second on the timesheets, which will no doubt lead to a few surprise results in qualifying later today.

Of the four Grands Prix held here to-date, the last three have been won from pole position. With overtaking extremely difficult around the track’s poorly-designed layout, a bad qualifying session could spell the end of some drivers’ weekends…

2012 European Formula 1 Grand Prix – Free Practice 3 Session Times:

	Driver	Team	Time	Gap	Laps
1.	Jenson Button	McLaren Mercedes MP4-27	1:38.562		17
2.	Romain Grosjean	Lotus F1 Renault E20	1:38.655	+ 0.093	18
3.	Kimi Räikkönen	Lotus F1 Renault E20	1:38.759	+ 0.197	18
4.	Nico Hülkenberg	Force India Mercedes VJM05	1:38.819	+ 0.257	17
5.	Paul di Resta	Force India Mercedes VJM05	1:38.892	+ 0.330	17
6.	Sergio Pérez	Sauber Ferrari C31	1:39.084	+ 0.522	20
7.	Michael Schumacher	Mercedes AMG F1 W03	1:39.141	+ 0.579	15
8.	Lewis Hamilton	McLaren Mercedes MP4-27	1:39.178	+ 0.616	17
9.	Felipe Massa	Scuderia Ferrari F2012	1:39.318	+ 0.756	15
10.	Pastor Maldonado	Williams Renault FW34	1:39.357	+ 0.795	18
11.	Kamui Kobayashi	Sauber Ferrari C31	1:39.358	+ 0.796	19
12.	Fernando Alonso	Scuderia Ferrari F2012	1:39.395	+ 0.833	15
13.	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull Racing Renault RB8	1:39.434	+ 0.872	13
14.	Bruno Senna	Williams Renault FW34	1:39.543	+ 0.981	13
15.	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes AMG F1 W03	1:39.946	+ 1.384	20
16.	Jean-Éric Vergne	Scuderia Toro Rosso Ferrari STR7	1:40.037	+ 1.475	17
17.	Daniel Ricciardo	Scuderia Toro Rosso Ferrari STR7	1:40.134	+ 1.572	20
18.	Heikki Kovalainen	Caterham Renault CT01	1:40.681	+ 2.119	15
19.	Mark Webber	Red Bull Racing Renault RB8	1:41.282	+ 2.720	4
20.	Vitaly Petrov	Caterham Renault CT01	1:41.931	+ 3.369	15
21.	Pedro de la Rosa	HRTF1 Cosworth F112	1:42.758	+ 4.196	14
22.	Charles Pic	Marussia Racing Cosworth MR01	1:42.815	+ 4.253	16
23.	Narain Karthikeyan	HRTF1 Cosworth F112	1:42.943	+ 4.381	14
24.	Timo Glock	Marussia Racing Cosworth MR01	1:43.124	+ 4.562	16