Mark Webber fastest in final practice

Both Red Bulls of Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel came back into the mix on Saturday morning as practice for the Chinese Grand Prix came to an end.

The Australian set the fastest lap time of the session, two tenths of a second quicker than yesterday’s pacesetter Lewis Hamilton. Vettel was third fastest, ahead of Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso.

With the Red Bulls back in the top four, the Mercedes of Rosberg and Schumacher were relegated to sixth and seventh. Both of them were still within a second of Webber.

Kubica, Massa and Kobayashi completed the top ten.

Sebastien Buemi tried to make up for the time lost yesterday and ended practice in thirteenth place.

The session had to be red-flagged with 17 minutes to go when Vitaly Petrov went wide and lost control of his Renault. He impacted against the barriers, damaging the front end of his car. The Russian was unhurt. Practice resumed once the track had been cleared of all debris.

Virgin won the battle of the new teams thanks to the 19th fastest time set by Timo Glock.