Sebastian Vettel topped the timesheets in the final practice session for the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps.
The German’s fastest lap, a 1:48.327, was 0.105 seconds quicker than Fernando Alonso’s best effort.
Mark Webber was third fastest, while Jean-Eric Vergne, who was top of the timesheets after all of the teams had made their long runs on the Pirelli hard tyre, ended the session in an excellent fourth place.
Felipe Massa was fifth, ahead of Jenson Button in sixth. An impressive lap from Esteban Gutierrez saw the Mexican finish the session seventh.
Lewis Hamilton had all sorts of problems heading into the bus-stop chicane throughout the session. He needed to use the run-off area at one point after locking up, and in a separate incident, managed to spin 180-degrees going into the chicane. He eventually finished the session down in P12.
Paul di Resta could do nothing to improve the fortunes of the Brits. He diced with the barriers on the exit of Turn 9 at start of the session, and finished down in fifteenth place on the timesheets, two behind teammate Adrian Sutil.
Tyres were the talk of the paddock during this morning’s session after the punctures that befell Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso during Free Practice 2 yesterday. An article on the Autosport website links these failures to a piece of metal that fell off Kimi Räikkönen’s Lotus just moments before.
Räikkönen, who topped the timesheets during the early part of today’s session, had another part falls of his car coming out of the final corner approximately half way through FP3. The Finn finished the session in tenth.
Looks like the Debris Deployment Device is working well #SPArtacus
— Lotus F1 Team (@Lotus_F1Team) August 24, 2013
The Lotus Twitter account explains Raikkonen’s moulting car
