Massa goes fastest in final Spanish practice

F1 Grand Prix, GP Spain, Circuit de Catalunya

Felipe Massa emerged fastest out of the final free practice session ahead of qualifying for the Spanish GP. In a busy session he went faster than Kimi Raikkonen and Mark Webber.

Under sunny skies, FP3 kicks off with drivers immediately out on track to do their installation lap. Both Red Bull drivers were out straight away with their front wings covered with flow viz. McLaren meanwhile even had parts coming over during the night in an attempt to fix their car's issues after the updates tested on Friday did not seem to bring in a lot of improvement.

20 minutes into the session, Lotus drivers Grosjean and Raikkonen took the upper hand when completing a few laps on the harder tyre. Up to that moment, Vettel had been on top of the timesheet without much effort at all.

Halfway, Ferrari put in a few flying laps with both its cars. Alonso ended up on top of the timesheet, also running on the harder tyre. Felipe Massa went fourth fastest, crossing the line a bit later than his teammate.

5 minutes later, Sergio Pérez returns to the pits, reporting a strange feeling in the front suspension. One lap earlier, a big piece of carbon fibre already flew off of the front wing when Perez was on the kerbs on the exit of turn 16. Later investigation revealed it was part of the brake duct that broke loose.

18 minutes from the end of the session, Alonso is the first front runner to start a flying lap on the medium tyres, gaining about 8 tenths on his previous best on the hards. Rosberg follows suit a little bit later and is 0.6s slower than Alonso. Hamilton laps as well and improves Rosberg by 2 tenths to slot into second place so far.

Another 10 minutes later, Massa has gone fastest, ahead of Raikkonen, Webber, Alonso, Di Resta, Sutil, Hamilton,Vergne, Rosberg and Grosjean. This remained about the same until the end of the session, with McLaren's failed attempts to improve their times confirming that their updates are not bringing the improvement they hoped for.