Barcelona FP3: Rosberg bounces back

After playing second fiddle to Mercedes teammate on Friday afternoon, Nico Rosberg bounced back to take top spot on the timing sheets at the end of the third and final free practice session for the Spanish Grand Prix.

Rosberg set a best time of 1:26.021, which was almost a full second faster than anyone so far this weekend and notably two tenths of a second up on Lewis Hamilton in the sister car, whose time was good enough for third.

The world champion complained about the balance of his car a day earlier, and survived a spin midway through the hour session.

Rosberg ran quickest on Friday morning only to see Hamilton set the fastest lap of the second practice session as the teams went through their initial qualifying-style runs but in the final preparations for Saturday afternoon’s grid shoot-out it was Rosberg who gained the upper hand, his best time of 1:26.021 being good enough to take P1 ahead of Vettel.

The early part of the session was run with significantly lower track temperatures than those seen on Friday afternoon when the circuit surface hit 50 degrees Celsius and early on a number of driver struggled to make the hard tyres used in the opening phase work well.

Rosberg too complained of trouble getting his rear brakes up to temperature, but the German still managed to run quickest on the hard tyres, setting a time of 1:26.777s to beat Hamilton by 0.188. The Briton also suffered a lurid spin midway through the session, running wide on the exit of Turn 3 and losing control as his car went over astroturf at the track edge. He managed to keep going to set a best hard-tyre time of 1:26.965.

Behind him in this phase was Daniel Ricciardo, though the Red Bull Racing driver had made an early switch to the option medium tyre, which was expected to give a 1.5s advantage over the orange-sidewalled hard.

Fourth on the hard tyres was Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen, who after an unhappy Friday during which he frequently complained of poor grip, appeared much more comfortable with his SF15-T. He ended the opening exchanges ahead of Williams’ Valtteri Bottas and sixth placed Ferrari team-mate Sebastian Vettel.

Elsewhere, there were problems for Red Bull Racing’s Daniil Kvyat. His team found a water leak on his car prior to the start of the session and he spent much of the hour-long session in the garage.

He eventually emerged with a little over 20 minutes left on the clock for an opening hard tyre run that left him 10th and two seconds adrift of Rosberg’s pace.

Kvyat’s first laps coincided with the start of the qualifying simulations for the rest of the field, with Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg the first man, apart from Ricciardo, to test the medium tyres. His opening time was good enough for P7 but it was still 1.3s down on Rosberg’s hard-tyre best.

Bottas was the first of the expected front-runners to show his hand ands he took P1 with a time of 1:26.682, just under a tenth faster than Rosberg on the hard tyres.

The Williams driver was quickly beaten by Rosberg, who posted his session-best time of 1:26.021. Vettel slotted into P2, a tenth adrift of his countryman and Hamilton then took P3 ahead of Bottas.

And that was largely how the order stayed as few improvements were registered in the final moments of the session. Bottas was followed Raikkonen, almost eight tenths of a second adrift of team-mate Vettel. Ricciardo’s earlier lap on the mediums stood as his best of the session and he claimed sixth place ahead of Felipe Massa in the second Williams and Toro Rosso’s Max Verstappen.

Kvyat got in one run on the medium tyres in the final minutes to climb from 17th to P9 and tenth place was taken by Carlos Sainz in the second Toro Rosso.

[highlight ]Spanish Grand Prix, Free Practice 3 - Saturday, 9 May 2015[/highlight]