Practice 3 Report - Pole vaults to number one

Robert Kubica set the pace for BMW Sauber in the Saturday morning session for the Japanese Grand Prix, but the times were not deeply significant with Timo Glock's Toyota second fastest, Nelson Piquet's Renault third quickest, Nick Heidfeld's BMW Sauber fourth and Kazuki Nakajima's Williams-Toyota fifth.

David Coulthard was next up in his Red Bull Renault ahead of Felipe Massa's Ferrari, the Red Bull of Mark Webber, Fernando Alonso's Renault, Sebastian Vettel's Toro Rosso and Lewis Hamilton's McLaren.

The session started wet but the track dried and by the end of the session everyone was running around on intermediate rubber. There were a number of spins, including one for Kimi Raikkonen but once again no-one did any damage to the cars.

It remains to be seen whether this is at all relevant in the overall scheme of things. Glock's pace for Toyota has been consistent but it is hard not to see this as a Toyota PR exercise at its home track, in front of a home crowd.

The weather will obviously have some impact but with no more rain expected, the pattern this afternoon could be very different.