Japan – Free Practice 3: Vettel Shows Up Before Qualifying

The weather is a bit less ideal than yesterday as the green light is lit at the end of the pit lane. While the ambient temperature is 24°C and the track temperature is 35°C, the sun isn’t quite shining, with gray skies dominating the Japanese sky.

As usual, after a flurry of installation laps, the Hard tires are out for this first part of the session. Nico Rosberg is the first to be timed, with a lap of 1:43.486, which he improves to 1:35.168 one lap later. The German, on track with his teammate Michael Schumacher, complains on the radio about high-speed oversteer. But the seven-time World Champion surpasses his teammate with a 1:34.234 and then a 1:34.008. Braking is evidently complicated in the F1 W03, with both drivers regularly locking up the front wheels.

After almost 20 minutes, many have interposed themselves between the Mercedes, the first of them being Romain Grosjean. And while Narain Karthikeyan and Kamui Kobayashi get caught out in the Degner corners, forced to go through the gravel but without causing visible damage to their cars, it is Pastor Maldonado who climbs to the top of the timesheet by a whisker, with a 1:33.999. But the Venezuelan is quickly surpassed by Jenson Button, with a lap of 1:33.621, then by Lewis Hamilton in 1:33.569.

Shortly before the mid-session, Sebastian Vettel manages to be faster than the McLarens with a time of 1:33.215, still on hard tires, while the track is not very busy. Felipe Massa takes the opportunity to complete his first lap of the session, placing him 6th at 7 tenths behind, but with the best time in the last sector. Kimi Räikkönen is then the only one not to have set a time, apparently suffering from a difficult problem to resolve, requiring multiple returns to the pits.

Nico Rosberg is the pioneer of the session today, with his Mercedes being the first to go out on the yellow-walled Soft tires. However, it’s not enough to do better than 1:33.899, landing him in 5th place, more than 6 tenths behind Sebastian Vettel. Meanwhile, Romain Grosjean, who was already seen drifting at the exit of Spoon earlier in the session, is caught off guard again, this time at the entrance of the same corner, forcing him to go wide.

But the Franco-Swiss driver’s mistake is not the one with the most consequences today: Nico Hülkenberg gets caught in Degner 2, going into a slight oversteer, but he cannot recover in time to avoid the tire wall. His session is over, with the left front suspension torn off. The yellow flag is thus deployed with about twenty minutes remaining in the session, and with two additional hours that the Force India mechanics will need to try to make the best use of to get the VJM05 ready before the start of Q1. Among the incidents, we can also add the loss of a deflector at the end of the straight for a Caterham, which is not the first after Vitaly Petrov’s rear wing loss yesterday in Free Practice 2.

With a quarter of an hour remaining, Michael Schumacher is the first to dip below the 1:33 mark, clocking in at 1:32.918 on Soft tires. Meanwhile, Romain Grosjean is once again off course, this time in the first corner, and his teammate Kimi Räikkönen posts one of his initial times, 1:35.314, with the Finnish driver expressing his discontent upon returning to the pits with repeated nods. On track, Sebastian Vettel, still on Hard tires, improves his own time, reducing the gap with his compatriot to 108 milliseconds (1:33.026). The surviving Force India, driven by Paul Di Resta, positions right behind the German, but on Soft tires (1:33.094).

In the last 5 minutes, these same yellow sidewall tires are responsible for several improvements. Mark Webber is the first to set the fastest time at 1:32.371, a performance that Sebastian Vettel falls short of by 128 thousandths. Traffic makes things complicated, with the attempts from McLaren and Pastor Maldonado or even Bruno Senna having to be aborted due to encountering a slower car. Finally, there are a few more improvements: among others, Massa climbs to 3rd place at 1:32.824, Pérez records the 5th fastest time at 1:32.920, just 4 thousandths ahead of his teammate, before Sebastian Vettel decisively takes the best mark at 1:32.136.

The double German World Champion is thus ahead of his teammate Mark Webber, with the two Red Bulls positioning themselves more than half a second ahead of the rest of the field, starting with Felipe Massa’s Ferrari. These results should be weighed against the traffic, which prevented the two McLaren drivers, who were very efficient on Hard tires, from setting a significant time on Softs.

Free Practice 3 Results of the 2012 Japanese Grand Prix: