Free Practice 3: The Great Return of Ferrari, Finally!

The Scuderia finally impresses! Both drivers finish at the top of the time sheets with Felipe Massa ahead of Kimi Räikkönen for this final practice session of the Spanish Grand Prix. They both clock under the one minute 21 seconds mark. The Brawn GP drivers are not far behind in 3rd and 4th positions.

Under a slightly cloudy sky and decent temperatures (19°C in the air and 29°C on the track), Felipe Massa is leading this session with an 82-millisecond lead over his teammate Räikkönen. The championship leader, Jenson Button, is third, nearly half a second behind the Finn.

Rubens Barrichello is just behind his teammate with the second Brawn, and Robert Kubica completes the top five for BMW.

Ferrari dominated this session for a large part of the hour as Massa and Räikkönen took the best time from Fernando Alonso (Renault) midway through the session.

Barrichello was briefly in the lead after 41 minutes of testing before Massa regained his position.

At this stage, all the leaders were still on hard tires, but in the last 14 minutes many would switch to softs like Toyota and Timo Glock. Immediate effect as the German achieved the best time at this point in the session.

He was completely overshadowed by Massa’s time of 1:21.377 on soft tires as well. In 2007, during the race, he had achieved a time of 1:20.553, so there is significant room for improvement.

Even the Brawns couldn’t do anything as Räikkönen clinched second place, initially 0.3 seconds behind his teammate before closing the gap to less than a tenth of a second.

Behind the Ferraris, the Brawns, and Kubica, we find the Toyota duo with Jarno Trulli and Timo Glock, in sixth and eighth respectively, separated by Lewis Hamilton for McLaren.

Sebastien Buemi with his revised Toro Rosso is back in the top ten in ninth position ahead of the local hero Alonso.

The leader of the Friday afternoon practice, Nico Rosberg is only 12th in his Williams, after a brief off-track excursion at Campsa. He is ahead of the Finnish driver, Heikki Kovalainen, the second McLaren driver.

Red Bull is ultimately quite far back since Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel are in positions 13 and 16, separated by Sébastien Bourdais in the Toro Rosso and Nelson Piquet for Renault.

Nick Heidfeld lost half of the session after losing control of his BMW at turn 12. The front left corner of his car was heavily damaged, leaving the German driver in the last position since he was unable to switch to soft tires.

The Force India driver, Giancarlo Fisichella, experiences a less severe incident, heading off at turn 7, but re-enters the track unharmed after a trip through the grass. He is 17th while his teammate, Adrian Sutil, is 19th behind Kazuki Nakajima.

Free Practice 3 Results – Barcelona – Saturday, May 9: