FP3: Silver meddles

Nico Rosberg set the fastest time of the free practice session on Saturday in Malaysia with his Silver Arrows Mercedes beating Sebastian Vettel’s Red Bull by four-tenths of a second. Mark Webber was third ahead of the Lotuses of Kimi Raikkonen and Romain Grosjean, Jenson Button’s McLaren, Pastor Maldonado’s Williams and Michael Schumacher’s Mercedes. The top 10 was completed by Lewis Hamilton in his McLaren and Kamui Kobayashi’s Sauber. Hamilton had a spin during the session but was very quick when he set his time at the end of the session, so the picture in qualifying will probably be rather different.

For the record, however, Bruno Senna was 11th in his Williams, ahead of Sergio Perez’s Sauber, Fernando Alonso’s Ferrari and the Force India of Nico Hulkenberg. The two Toro Rossos were next, split by a tenth, with Daniel Ricciardo ahead of Jean-Eric Vergne, while Paul di Resta was behind them. Felipe Massa was 18th ahead of the Caterhams of Vitaly Petrov and Heikki Kovalainen, the Marussias of Charles Pic and Timo Glock (an interesting order) and there was then a four-tenths gap back to Pedro de la Rosa’s HRT. At that pace both and Narain Karthikeyan ought to be able to beat the 107 percent rule that kept them out of the Australian GP.