Practice 3: Red alert as Alonso fastest of all

Mar.13 (YF1) Fernando Alonso fired an ominous warning to his rivals by powering the Ferrari F10 to the top of the timing screens in the final moments of the last practice session ahead of this afternoon’s qualifying.

The 1 minute 54.099 seconds lap drew gasps of admiration from the working press in the media centre and whoop of delight from the Ferrari mechanics. Team mate Felipe Massa was sixth fastest although over half a second down on the Spaniard whose standing within the team grows hour by hour.

A quarter of a second adrift of the leading Ferrari was Nico Rosberg (Mercedes GP) continued to impress by setting the second fastest time of the session, with Michael Schumacher fourth quickest.

Splitting the Silver Arrows in third was Mark Webber, emerging from a first day full of niggles for Red Bull. Sebastian Vettel was fifth fastest.

Jenson Button was quickest of the McLaren duo with seventh fastest time. But the team’s weekend took a turn for the worse as Lewis Hamilton could only manage eight laps before being forced to curtail his session with a problem with the left brake duct that worked itself loose forcing the Woking squad to come up with a solution fast. Asa result the 2008 World Champion was down in 12th.

Renault continued to be the best of the rest in the hands of Robert Kubica who was eighth quickest and within a second of Alonso’s flyer. Rookie Vitaly Petrov was 18th on the timing sheets.

For the first time this weekend Force India’s fastest driver was not Adrian Sutil but Vitantonio Liuzzi. The Italian was ninth fastest with Sutil 11th.

Again fastest rookie, fastest Cosworth runner and faster than his veteran team mate was Nico Hulkenberg in the Williams. The young German has not put a foot wrong all weekend. So far. Rubens Barrichello, dogged with small problems that has limited his running, was 14th fastest.

Sauber has yet to live to talk that it could be the “surprise package” as Pedro de la Rosa could only manage 13the best lap time and Kamui Kobayashi 17th fastest. Perhaps the Swiss team are keeping their powder dry until qualifying…

Also not showing the kind of promise shown in preseason testing are Toro Rosso with Sebastien Buemi 15th and Jaime Alguersuari 16th on the timing sheets.

Virgin Racing’s Timo Glock was fastest of the new teams, although five seconds down on Alonso, the German was over half a second quicker than the fastest Lotus. Glock had his share of drama when the front left wheel on the VR-01 came loose. Later it was established that the wheel nut was not tightened or in tech talk under-torqued!

Behind Glock were the Lotus pair of Heikki Kovalainen and Jarno Trulli, 20th and 21st respectively.

Bruno Senna (Hispania Racing) was slowest of the runners who actually recorded laps. He did 11 in total but was almost 10 seconds off the pace.

Lucas di Grassi (Virgin Racing) did two installation laps before returning to the pit garages with gearbox problems. The Brazilian never went out again in the session.

Karun Chandhok’s woes continued and he will not make his Grand Prix debut in bahrain. He summed up another day of high anxiety and frustration, “We got in the car and everything seemed OK this morning. We were ready to go but it wouldn’t go into first gear – once again some problems with the hydraulic system. It’s driving us crazy at the moment. The more time the engineers spend talking to me, the less time they have to work, so I’m just letting them get on with it.”

Practice 3 best lap times