Mark Webber leads in final practice

Mark Webber topped the times at the end of third practice. He was quickest by two hundredths of a second, ahead of Jenson Button and Sebastian Vettel.

Both McLaren drivers went into the final session with new rear wings. Jenson Button was fastest during the first half of the session – half a second ahead of Fernando Alonso, who was closely followed by Mark Webber.

Sebastian Vettel managed a 1’47.737 for first on his fifth lap. He promptly improved that by four-tenths of a second.

Michael Schumacher set a 1’47.837 for second on super softs on his ninth lap. His teammate was at one point more than three seconds slower – with the floor of his Mercedes dragging on the way to Memorial corner, sending up a lot of sparks – but managed second on a new set of super softs, eight-tenths off the pace and six-thousandths faster than Schumacher with just 10 minutes of the session to go.

Fernando Alonso was the first to set a time in the 1’46s on his first run on new super softs, but his time was promptly bettered by Jenson Button who managed a 1’46.108.

Mark Webber then managed a 1’46.081 to go top. It looked as if his teammate might better this on the last lap but Vettel decided to abort his last run and Webber ended the session in the lead.

Lewis Hamilton struggled, spending most of the session in 18th and eight seconds off the pace. He managed fifth on his first lap on new super softs and stayed fifth.

Both Bruno Senna and Vitaly Petrov struggled down in 17th and 16th for Renault. They had expected a tough time at this track.

Lotus made a number of changes to both cars from yesterday, including the ride heights, front wing, camber and anti-roll bars. These adjustments will stay for qualifying and the race. They ended the session 19th and 22nd.

The two slowest drivers during most of the session were the Toro Rossos, after Sebastien Buemi’s incident with the barrier at turn 21 and Jaime Alguersuari’s technical problems yesterday. They ended FP3 in 12th and 18th.

Several kerbs that had been removed between first and second practice yesterday have been restored and there was repeat of the problems that delayed FP1 by half an hour as kerbs were repaired at the exit of several corners.

Pos.	Car	Driver	Car	Best lap	Gap
1	2	Mark Webber	Red Bull-Renault	1’46.081		15
2	4	Jenson Button	McLaren-Mercedes	1’46.108	0.027	17
3	1	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull-Renault	1’46.345	0.264	14
4	5	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	1’46.396	0.315	14
5	3	Lewis Hamilton	McLaren-Mercedes	1’46.936	0.855	20
6	8	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1’47.831	1.750	14
7	7	Michael Schumacher	Mercedes	1’47.837	1.756	12
8	6	Felipe Massa	Ferrari	1’48.711	2.630	12
9	16	Kamui Kobayashi	Sauber-Ferrari	1’49.057	2.976	15
10	14	Adrian Sutil	Force India-Mercedes	1’49.304	3.223	16
11	17	Sergio Perez	Sauber-Ferrari	1’49.583	3.502	17
12	18	Sebastien Buemi	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	1’49.679	3.598	18
13	15	Paul di Resta	Force India-Mercedes	1’49.816	3.735	18
14	12	Pastor Maldonado	Williams-Cosworth	1’49.851	3.770	17
15	11	Rubens Barrichello	Williams-Cosworth	1’50.189	4.108	15
16	10	Vitaly Petrov	Renault	1’50.229	4.148	15
17	9	Bruno Senna	Renault	1’50.523	4.442	14
18	19	Jaime Alguersuari	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	1’50.547	4.466	17
19	20	Heikki Kovalainen	Lotus-Renault	1’52.510	6.429	17
20	25	Jerome D’Ambrosio	Virgin-Cosworth	1’52.697	6.616	19
21	22	Daniel Ricciardo	HRT-Cosworth	1’53.728	7.647	17
22	21	Jarno Trulli	Lotus-Renault	1’53.823	7.742	18
23	24	Timo Glock	Virgin-Cosworth	1’53.829	7.748	16
24	23	Vitantonio Liuzzi	HRT-Cosworth	1’55.203	9.122	17

2011 Singapore Grand Prix

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