As the drivers did their best to make up for lost time after the wet second training session Friday afternoon, is was Fernando Alonso who set the fastest lap time in the third and final session on Saturday.
Followed by Lewis Hamilton and Sergio Perez in 2nd and 3rd respectively, most of the focus were turned to Lotus and their new double DRS, their own version of Mercedes´ DRS system. But it hasn´t been as overwhelming as the team had hoped for, while Kimi Raikkonen finishing in 4th is very good, Romain Grosjean ended his training in 11th place. Still it remains to be seen if the system can have a positive effect in the race.
After Nico Rosberg set a pace in the 1:17.4 area, the drivers started to shave off tenths of seconds. Felipe Massa snatched the fastest time away from the German, the Bruno Senna joined in on the fun and took 3rd, then Mark Webber followed by Pastor Maldonado and Sebastian Vettel. And so it went.
The Ferrari mechanics worked a lot on Alonso´s tyres, but as he came ut he set the fastest time, only to be bettered by Lewis Hamilton, who interestingly was on the harder medium compound, where Alonso had the softer tyres fitted. But Alonso returned to the front, setting a fastest time of 1:16.014.
So Mark Webber came 5th, then Sebastian Vettel, Pastor Maldonado, Felipe Massa, Kamui Kobayashi and Bruno Senna to finish the top ten. Behind them came Romain Grosjean, Nico Hulkenberg, Paul di Resta , Daniel Ricciardo, Michael Schumacher, Jean-Eric Vergne, Nico Rosberg, Heikki Kovalainen, Vitaly Petrov, Pedro de la Rosa, Timo Glock, Charles Pic Marussia, Narain Karthikeyan, Jenson Button.
