Vettel brings Red Bull back on top

Practice for the Canadian GP concluded this morning with a final 60-minute session.

Sebastian Vettel brought Red Bull back on top with the fastest time of all. The German left it quite late to complete some flying laps on the super-soft tyres but made the most of them and beat Alonso by three tenths of a second.

Mercedes’ Rosberg was third fastest. Massa was fourth while the McLarens of Button and Hamilton were fifth and sixth and not quite on the pace.

Schumacher, Petrov, Sutil and di Resta completed the top ten.

How the session unfolded :

Conditions were still dry thus allowing the teams to gently resume their preparation for qualifying and the race.

There was not much action at first as they did their routine checks before sending the cars out for some proper runs. Mercedes blinked first and, for a while, Nico Rosberg was the sole driver on track.

The German set the early pace and completed four timed laps before pitting. Other drivers then joined the track but were quite far off Rosberg’s pace. Renault’s Petrov was his closest challenger but was 1.8s slower. Kobayashi was third fastest.

Twenty minute into the session, the usual frontrunners joined the action. Button moved up to P2 while Vettel slotted in third place. Both of them improved, so did Rosberg. With 35 minutes left, Vettel and Rosberg topped the timesheets. Massa was up in third, just ahead of Alonso and Button.

Rosberg found some improvement to edge out Vettel before the midway point and was the first to lap in the 1’13 bracket. Halfway through the session, the Mercedes driver was leading from Vettel, Alonso, Massa, Button and Hamilton. Mark Webber was still to leave the pits as his mechanics worked on a suspected KERS battery issue.

Super-soft tyres were used in the final part of the session. The Ferrari drivers managed to improve and Alonso equaled Rosberg’s mark. His teammate Massa, meanwhile, moved one place up. At this point, the top three was covered by 0.037s.

Alonso stayed on track for a few more laps and eventually beat Rosberg to top the board.

With three minutes to go, all the cars – bar Webber’s Red Bull and Glock’s Virgin were on track.

Sebastian Vettel completed a fast flying lap on the super soft tyre to take P1 despite a slight mistake at the Casino Hairpin. No one was able to match him and he ended the session on top.

Pedro de la Rosa, subbing in for Pérez this weekend, crashed his Sauber at the very end of the session. The right rear corner of the car was damaged, as well as the nosecone and front wing.