Rosberg flies in Saturday Practice too

Fri, Mar 27, 2009

Diffuser controversy notwithstanding, William’s Nico Rosberg is making the best of whatever advantage his car is giving him. After a splendid performance in the Friday practice, Nice continued his good form to take the lead in the 3rd practice, just before qualifying today.

Rosberg claimed the top position in the final practice session by the narrowest of margins from Toyota’s Jarno Trulli after the Brawn GP cars had led the way for much of the session.

Rosberg’s best time of 1m25.808s was just over 0.2s faster than the German managed on Friday, with Trulli just 0.003s behind as he showed the potential of the impressive TF109 for the first time this weekend.

Again it was the ‘diffuser gang’ of three teams that featured predominantly at the top of the timing charts, with only Felipe Massa breaking their stranglehold of the first six positions for Ferrari.

The Brazilian ended the session just 0.2s off the ultimate pace having shown inconclusive speed on Friday.

Team-mate Kimi Raikkonen, however, endured a nightmare session and goes into qualifying with reliability concerns over his car after he stopped on track following a loss of hydraulic pressure following just five laps.

McLaren showed slightly improved speed on Saturday morning with Heikki Kovalainen and Lewis Hamilton winding up 11th and 12th respectively.

Australian GP free practice session three Results

1. ROSBERG Williams 1m25.808s

2. TRULLI Toyota 1m25.811s

3. BUTTON Honda 1m25.981s

4. MASSA Ferrari 1m26.020s

5. NAKAJIMA Williams 1m26.078s

6. BARRICHELLO Honda 1m26.348s

7. WEBBER Red Bull 1m26.355s

8. GLOCK Toyota 1m26.410s

9. KUBICA BMW 1m26.514s

10. HEIDFELD BMW 1m26.555s