Practice 3 Report - Vettel Fastest Ahead Of Qualifying in Turkey

Sebastian Vettel (1:27.086) shot Red Bull back to the top of the time sheets in the more representative third session of free practice for the Turkish GP at Istanbul. The young German finished the session 0.27s quicker than Nico Rosberg's Mercedes.

Lewis Hamilton (1:27.396) was right in touch, his session including a lurid spin at the spectacular Turn 8, which flat-spotted a rear tyre right down to the canvas. Hamilton ended up in the gravel but managed to extricate himself, tour back to the pits and resume the session.

As everyone started to push the limits in preparation for qualifying, championship leader Mark Webber (1:27.553) also spun at Turn 8. His Friday failure at the end of FP2 was actually a blown engine but the team said that it was a unit that was high on mileage and denied having any reliability worries. The team has elected not to run its experimental F-Duct any more this weekend after trying it on both cars on Friday afternoon.

Robert Kubica (1:27.784) also used all the Turn 8 road and a bit more en route to fifth fastest time, marginally quicker than Fernando Alonso's Ferrari (1:27.861). Michael Schumacher (1:27.879) was just a hundredth down on the Ferrari but half a second shy of team mate Rosberg.

Jenson Button (1:27.963) ended the morning with eighth best time, narrowly pipping Felipe Massa's Ferrari (1:28.969) as Vitaly Petrov's Renault (1:28.344) completed the top 10.

With the top 10 positions occupied by five different chassis, the evidence is that, like Barcelona, chassis performance is far more key than it was in Monte Carlo and Vettel will be hoping that his new Red Bull RB6, dubbed 'Randy Mandy' will allow him to go 4-3 ahead in his personal pole battle with team mate Webber.