Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel held off his championship-leading teammate Mark Webber to take yesterday’s practice honors for this weekend’s Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka.
The 23-year-old German, who beat Webber in morning practice by just four one-hundredths of a second, recorded his benchmark time of 1 minute 31.465 seconds with 23 minutes remaining in the afternoon session. Webber, who has a 21-point advantage over the fourth-placed Vettel in the championship standings with four races remaining, was again second, 0.395secs behind his teammate.
“The pace looked all right,” Vettel said.
“We had a trouble-free Friday, so that’s the most important [thing], especially on a track like this when you need to get the feeling and get into a rhythm with all those corners all following each other,” he said. “It was important to not have any trouble, and the car was reliable today, so I have a good feeling.”
Poland’s Robert Kubica was third — as he was in morning practice — for Renault, while Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso, winner of the last two races in Italy and Singapore, was fourth. Aside from Webber, only Kubica and Alonso could lap within a second of Vettel’s top time, the Red Bull duo again showing the prowess of the nimble RB6 chassis on the fast and flowing Suzuka layout.
“We are more or less the same as what we were expecting, and the gap to Red Bull is normal,” Kubica said.
The 25-year-old Pole, trailing at eighth place in the championship, was fortunate to survive a wild spin in the afternoon session.
“This afternoon was quite windy, which made our lives more difficult, especially in the first sector,” Kubica said. “I was a bit lucky that it came back.”
Alonso’s teammate Felipe Massa was fifth, more than a second off the front-running pace, while reigning world champion Jenson Button was sixth for McLaren.
“We made some steps forward, but we’re still quite a bit off the pace compared to the Red Bulls,” Button said. “It’s only practice, but still, I think we are off the pace compared to them.”
Button’s teammate Lewis Hamilton, who crashed heavily in morning practice, was forced to sit out all but the last 10 minutes of the session as the team hastily repaired his car.
He completed just eight laps, and finished the session in 13th place, more than two seconds off Vettel’s pace. Hamilton’s accident was the latest in a string of shunts involving the 25-year-old, who was forced to retire from the last two Grand Prix with accident damage.
“They say bad things come in threes — so after Monza, Singapore and today, I hope this run of bad luck is over and done with,” said the Englishman, who admitted to “pushing too hard, too soon” on his second fast lap.
Hamilton, who stands third in the championship, 20 points behind Webber, was left to rue a lack of practice time with a host of upgrades being introduced by McLaren this weekend, including a revised front wing and new rear wing.
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