Patronise F1

Belgian GP. FP3 Report. A reassuringly meaningless Saturday practice session saw Nick Heidfeld take the top spot on the timesheets in his BMW Sauber. But the really big news from the session was what was happening to Mark Webber's Red Bull engine.

There was plenty of on-track running in FP3 for once, possibly caused by the teams missing crucial faffing time yesterday after the rain shower in FP1, but most of the pace-setting was done by the weaker teams, as their drivers worked on low-fuel runs for their efforts to escape the first part of qualifying later on today.

The early part of the session was slightly more normal, with the two McLarens dominating things, as first Lewis Hamilton and then Heikki Kovalainen took turns at the front of the times. Kovalainen was deposed by Adrian Sutil just after the halfway point, and from there it looked as if the Force India driver was set to pick up a second straight FP3 session-topper.

But in the closing moments, Heidfeld and Toyota's Jarno Trulli scampered around faster than the German and took away his minimal glory.

Sutil had to be content with 3rd, ahead of the impressive, if light on fuel, Renault of Romain Grosjean, who was comfortably quicker than his two-time champion team mate Fernando Alonso for most of the session. Timo Glock was 5th in the second Toyota, while Robert Kubica popped up in 6th late on in the second BMW Sauber.

Nico Rosberg was 7th for Williams, but his own late-session, low-fuel lap disguised the serious problems Williams seem to have at the Spa track. Rosberg spent most of the session languishing near the bottom of the times, while his team mate Kazuki Nakajima finished slowest of all in this session. Qualifying promises to be an unhappy affair for the Grove team.

Giancarlo Fisichella was 8th in the second Force India, while the two Brits, Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button completed the top ten. Button never looked particularly quick, but was the quickest of the title contenders, with Sebastian Vettel only managing 14th and Rubens Barrichello 16th.

It was a hugely unhappy session for the other title contender though. Mark Webber, who seemed to have passed his penchant for unlucky reliability issues on to his team mate in recent weekends, failed to complete a timed lap in the session after complaining of an engine problem.

The team have concluded that they will have to replace the unit for qualifying and the rest of the weekend, making it four engine problems for the Renault powerplants in the last three race weekends. Red Bull bosses, not to mention their drivers, will rightly be displeased.

So, with qualifying approaching, the order of the pacesetters is confused slightly, though McLaren look potentially the strongest. But in FP3, it wasn't the laps that were being done that set tongues wagging, but the car that didn't do a lap.