Australian Mark Webber made the most of running a new engine to clock the fastest time in Saturday’s final free practice session for the Malaysian Grand Prix.
The Red Bull driver, whose car suffered an engine failure on Friday, outpaced nearest rival Lewis Hamilton in a McLaren by little more than one-hundredth of a second.
Webber, 33, who finished a disappointing ninth after colliding with Hamilton at his home race in Melbourne last Sunday, clocked a best lap time of one minute and 33.542 seconds.
Hamilton was second in 1:33.554 ahead of Webber’s Red Bull team-mate German Sebastian Vettel with Spain’s Fernando Alonso fourth for Ferrari and seven-times world champion Michael Schumacher fifth for Mercedes. Herald Sun
Jenson Button was only seventh in the second McLaren, in 1m 34.113s, ahead of Felipe Massa (1m 34.174s), Rubens Barrichello (1m 34.540s), Robert Kubica (1m 34.549s), Adrian Sutil (1m 34.623s), Sebastien Buemi (1m 34.673s), Nico Hulkenberg (1m 34.882s) and Tonio Liuzzi (1m 34.957s).
The next batch was led by Jaime Alguersuari, who made a great save just when it seemed his Toro Rosso had got away from him. The young Spaniard was 15th on 1m 35.026s ahead of Renault’s Vitalty Petrov, who went autocrossing on his way to 1m 35.076s. Pedro de la Rosa was BMW Sauber’s quicker runner on 1m 35.477s, with Kamui Kobayashi a second slower on 1m 36.404s.
In the new teams’ stakes Virgin got ahead of Lotus, Timo Glock lapping his VR-01 in 1m 37.299s to pip Jarno Trulli’s 1m 37.369s in the T127. The Italian’s team mate was next on 1m 38.161s, ahead of Lucas di Grassi in the second Virgin on 1m 38.783s. Formula 1
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