Interlagos, FP3: Rosberg tops Brazil final practice

Nico Rosberg maintained his control of the Brazilian Grand Prix timesheets, finishing the final practice session just over a tenth of a second ahead of Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton. Felipe Massa was third for Williams in front of his home crowd.

The session began in considerably cooler temperatures than those of Friday with the track at 33˚C compared with afternoon highs of 58˚C in FP2. Overnight rain had also washed away much of the rubber laid down on day one of the weekend and the track was dusty and lacking grip. That led to many drivers tip-toeing round in the early stages as they attempted to feel their way into the conditions.

Most found the track to be better than expected however, with Romain Grosjean’s engineer telling the Frenchman that “from other people’s laptimes, the track looks to be in reasonable condition.”

The best times on the medium tyre were, however, not being set by the expected front runners at Mercedes. Hamilton struggled to make progress with a big lock-up, which hurt his tyres badly, and then a spin at Turn One when he locked the rears.

At the front, it was Massa making the running, with the Brazilian setting a lap of 1:11.559 to hold P1 ahead of Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen and Williams’ Valtteri Bottas with 37 minutes left.

As the session reached the half hour mark, Lotus’ Grosjean and Pastor Maldonado, Force India’s Sergio Perez and Toro Rosso’s Jean-Eric Vergne switched to the soft compound. The expected improvement vaulted Maldonado to fourth on the timesheet with Grosjean and Vergne slotting into sixth and eighth respectively. Hamilton, meanwhile, had retreated to the Mercedes garage to plot a move up from the foot of the rankings.

Massa, meanwhile, was still running on mediums and still holding on to top spot ahead of team-mate Bottas, Raikkonen and Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo.

Fernando Alonso then bolted on a set of soft tyres and snatched P1 away from his former Ferrari team-mate. His pre-eminence didn’t last long, however. Rosberg too was out on soft tyres and by the end of his first flyer on the option rubber he was in P1 and almost a second up on Alonso with a lap of 1m10.446.

Hamilton was soon back out too, and promptly jumped to P2 behind his team-mate, though he was 0.114 down on his team-mate.

And it was as close as he got to his sole title rival. The Briton’s final quick lap saw him set a purple first sector to provisionally dive under Rosberg’s benchmark but a scrappy second sector then left him two tenths adrift and he abandoned the lap.

At the end then, Rosberg continued to dominate, a tenth ahead of the championship leader with Massa third and half a second down on the German. Fourth place went to Bottas with Ricciardo fifth ahead of McLaren’s Jenson Button. Raikkonen was best-placed Ferrari in seventh, ahead of Alonso, who had quit the session after a single run on the soft tyre. Kevin Magnussen was ninth for McLaren, with Toro Rosso’s Daniil Kvyat in tenth place.