Practice 3 Report - Hamilton pips Alonso to quickest time

A fabulous Italian GP qualifying session is in prospect after Lewis Hamilton (1:24.578) pipped Fernando Alonso (1:24.579) to quickest time in the final session of free practice by just a thousandth of a second.

Alonso corrected a moment in the middle of Parabolica during his quickest lap and Ferrari appears to have the pace to take pole position in front of the fervent tifosi at Monza.

Third quickest was Paul Di Resta's Force India (1:24.849), with the Scot 0.06s quicker than the second Ferrari of Felipe Massa (1:24.909).

Jenson Button (1:24.994) was fifth qith the second McLaren, with Nico Rosberg's Mercedes (1:25.036) maintaining the sort of pace the team demonstarted on the opening day on both light and heavier fuel.

Sauber did not have as strong an opening day as they'd hoped, with Kamui Kobayashi stopped early because the Sauber was bouncing around so much that he feared he was going to spin on the straight. The team appears to have found some overnight answers, however, with Sergio Perez (1:25.160) seventh.

Kimi Raikkonen (1:25.255) was eighth for Lotus as Romain Grosjean stand-in Jerome D'Ambrosio did a solid job to lap within seven tenths of the 2007 world championship. In today's high;y competitive F1, however, that spelled 17th and suggests that D'Ambrosio could be battling to avoid the Q1 drop zone.

The top 10 was completed by Nico Hulkenberg's Force India (1:25.289) and Pastor Maldonado's Williams (1:25.389).