MONZA: Defending world champion and current runaway leader Sebastian Vettel topped the times again for Red Bull in Saturday’s final practice session ahead of Sunday’s Italian Grand Prix.
The 24-year-old German delivered the fastest lap of the morning and the weekend in the final seconds of a session run in warm late-summer sunshine, his time beating the best effort of Red Bull teammate Australian Mark Webber by three-tenths of a second.
Webber finished second fastest ahead of Brazilian Felipe Massa in the leading Ferrari and Briton Lewis Hamilton who was fourth for McLaren. His team-mate and compatriot Jenson Button wound up fifth after a session spent battling with set-up problems.
The late flurry of action pushed German Nico Rosberg of Mercedes, fastest for a long period, down to sixth ahead of his team-mate and compatriot seven-times champion Michael Schumacher, the 42-year-old veteran proving again that he is on the pace back at a circuit where he won five times for Ferrari. Two times champion Spaniard Fernando Alonso was eighth in the second Ferrari ahead of German Adrian Sutil and his Force India team-mate Briton Paul di Resta.
Paul di Resta was pipped by Renault’s Bruno Senna in the dying minutes of the Q2 session as none of the Force India cars made it to the top-10 in the qualifying session of the Italian Grand Prix .
Resta (1:24.163) was in contention for Q3 till the last minute but Senna (1:24.157) pushed him to 11th by just six thousands of a second in his last attempt.
Resta’s teammate Adrian Sutil was at 12th position with best lap timing of 1:24.209 as both the Force India drivers failed to make it to Q3 session.
Both the Force India drivers will start at the sixth row in Sunday’s race.
Meanwhile, Brazilian Bruno Senna, making his second appearance for Renault after replacing German Nick Heidfeld in Belgium two weeks ago, was 11th ahead of his team-mate Russian Vitaly Petrov.
Australian rookie Daniel Ricciardo ended his session in the Hispania garage with his car stripped down for serious mechanical surgery. (Agencies)