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Feb 07th
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Nico tops washed out session

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Brazilian GP. FP3 Report. The Williams - Toyota pairing of Nico Rosberg and Kazuki Nakajima scored a rather pointless one-two for the British team in a Saturday practice session that was almost entirely written-off by some very torrential rain in Brazil.

The thunderstorm enveloped Sao Paulo around half an hour before the session was due to begin, and by the time the session should have started, the track was drenched, the spectators were sodden and the cloud cover was such that the medical helicopter could not take off safely, meaning a delay to the start of the session.

As the rain continued to pelt down, and great bursts of lightning besieged the paddock, even going as far as completing a wonderful line in irony by knocking out the weather monitoring system at the track, the teams could only sit and watch in frustration, as the final precious moments of set-up time were ruined.

In the end, a truncated 18 minute window of running was scheduled after the clouds cleared and the helicopter was free to launch. The cars tip-toed out onto the still-drenched track for some tentative testing of the limits of the track.

Nico Rosberg was the fastest man throughout the brief window of on-track running, with his team mate Nakajima joining him at the top of the times, indicating that Williams had ramped up the downforce for the session. Jenson Button was the best of the championship contenders in third place, with Fernando Alonso fourth, despite a scary moment at turn five when he aquaplaned on standing water and went skating through the soaked grass.

Elsewhere, Kimi Raikkonen enjoyed a brief spin as he struggled with his Ferrari, while Romain Grosjean had an incident-packed session, spinning at the Senna S on one lap, then following that up with a similar moment to Alonso on the next.

Sadly for the Frenchman, he was unable to control the aquaplaning Renault and he slewed sideways across the grass, his car for a moment threatening to flip over completely on the soft ground, before going nose-first into the barriers. He was unhurt, but the Renault team now face a race against time to get the car ready for qualifying.

That accident brought out the red flag with five minutes still to go, curtailing the session even further.

The other title contenders completed just one run each, with Rubens Barrichello placing 14th and Sebastian Vettel 15th, but realistically little can be read into the timesheets from this practice run.

Now the drivers will likely face a still-wet track for qualifying with little set-up data to work on. It promises to be a breathless session.

  FP3 Times
   
Pos Driver Car Time Laps
1 Nico Rosberg
Williams - Toyota
1:23.182
9
2 Kazuki Nakajima Williams - Toyota 1:23.832
7
3 Jenson Button
Brawn - Mercedes
1:24.122
6
4 Fernando Alonso
Renault
1:24.125
5
5 Adrian Sutil
Force India - Mercedes 1:24.149
4
6 Romain Grosjean Renault
1:24.389
5
7 Sebastien Buemi
Toro Rosso - Ferrari 1:24.443
5
8 Jarno Trulli
Toyota
1:24.859
5
9 Nick Heidfeld
BMW Sauber
1:24.867
5
10 Mark Webber
Red Bull - Renault 1:25.440
5
11
Kimi Raikkonen
Ferrari
1:25.508
4
12 Heikki Kovalainen
McLaren - Mercedes 1:25.685 5
13 Jamie Alguersuari
Toro Rosso - Ferrari
1:26.224
6
14 Rubens Barrichello
Brawn - Mercedes 1:26.530
4
15 Sebastian Vettel
Red Bull - Renault
1:27.047
4
16 Vitantonio Liuzzi
Force India - Mercedes
1:27.341
4
17 Lewis Hamilton
McLaren - Mercedes
1:27.798 4
18 Giancarlo Fisichella
Ferrari
1:29.285
4
19 Robert Kubica
BMW Sauber
1:29.895
3
20 Kamui Kobayashi
Toyota
1:30.259
4