Webber shines in the wet

While the teams were hoping for some dry running this morning, they were greeted by rain at Spa-Francorchamps.

It was still raining when the track opened for the third and final free practice session of the weekend.

In these conditions, the drivers headed out for a simple installation lap, to check all the systems, and came back in the heaven of their respective garages.

There was no point for them to do more than that, even more so considering the restricted number of full wet and intermediate tyres available to them. They obviously preferred to save them, in case it would be raining for this afternoon’s qualifying session.

Jenson Button reported the conditions were “worse than what we had in Canada” and would cause a race to be red-flagged.

Rain kept pouring down for a while and the track remained desperately silent for the brave spectators. Daniel Ricciardo briefly broke the silence with 38 minutes remaining. As he was making his way back in the pits, Jaime Alguersuari came back out for a proper. He was soon followed by his teammate Sébastien Buemi.

Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel joined them. The Williams team also sent its cars on track. More drivers followed.

Buemi set the early pace but was demoted to 2nd by Mark Webber. The Australian’s benchmark was soon lowered by Alguersuari and then Buemi. As the Toro Rosso drivers pitted, the Force India drivers took over at the front.

The session slowly came to life as the conditions slightly improved. With five minutes left, the Ferrari drivers were the only drivers yet to post a time on the board. At the sharp end of the grid, Mark Webber was leading from Alguersuari, Button and Vettel.

Hamilton moved up to P2 under the chequered flag, 0.058s behind Webber. Alguersuari remained third with Button fourth and Vettel fifth. Alonso didn’t complete a timed lap.