Patronise F1

Italian GP. FP3 Report. Adrian Sutil topped another practice session in Italy, his second in a row, as the Force India team continued their staggering recent run of good form, in what proved to be a surprisingly incident-filled final practice run at the Monza circuit.

Sutil was near the top of the times all session, hitting the top after 40 minutes and then shaving more time off his lap during a final run on low fuel for the whole field. Although the Brawn GP car of Jenson Button briefly displaced him in the closing moments, Sutil pipped the championship leader at the last to install himself as a favourite for pole position.

Behind Sutil and Button came Nick Heidfeld's BMW Sauber, another team that has dragged itself up from nowhere just recently, though during the meat of the session, the Swiss-German cars were quiet in the midfield, Heidfeld produced a decent low-fuel lap towards the end to make it into the top three.

Rubens Barrichello was fourth in the second Brawn, highlighting either a return to form for the struggling team or a desperate switch of strategy to low-fuel Q2 planning as the team prepares for another difficult qualifying run.

Lewis Hamilton flirted with top spot for McLaren, but ended fifth, just ahead of his team mate Heikki Kovalainen, who ended sixth. Tonio Liuzzi quietly improved throughout the hour to finish 7th, just over half a second behind his session-topping team mate, a result that meant that an improbable six of the top seven cars were Mercedes-powered.

Fernando Alonso's Renault, Timo Glock's Toyota and Robert Kubica's BMW Sauber completed the top ten.

Further down, it was another trying session for Red Bull. Mark Webber and Sebastien Vettel ended 17th and 18th respectively, though both were again hindered by the need to conserve their dwindling engine allocation. Indeed, Webber didn't set a time until the second half of the session, and it was revealed that Vettel had taken his eighth engine for this weekend. Any more changes this season and he will start to accrue grid penalties.

Williams also continued to underperform, with Kazuki Nakajima 14th, two places ahead of his team mate Nico Rosberg, who seems to have tired of setting quickest practice times of late.

The session was surprisingly incident-filled for FP3, with the main entertainment coming from the second Ferrari. Though new Ferrari man Giancarlo Fisichella talked up his chances of making the front few rows of the grid before the session, his chances of such an achievement now look slim after he crashed his red machine at the Parabolica early on in the session. The curse of the #3 Ferrari continues.

Rookie Romain Grosjean in the Renault was also in the wars, making a mess of the Ascari chicane after two-thirds of the session and bouncing across the grass run-off. he sat out the rest of the session as the team checked the underneath of the car for signs of damage.

It was a miserable session for Jamie Alguersuari. The Toro Rosso driver picked up a gearbox glitch during the hour, and looks set to take a gearbox change and associated five-place grid penalty. Though he'll likely qualify so far back that it won't really matter anyway.

So, the madness of the 2009 season continues, with the McLarens looking set to battle the marauding Force Indias for pole position later on this afternoon.

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