Alonso is Fastest - Saturday Practice 3

- Published on Mar 13th, 2010 by Adam Milleneuve

The final practice session ahead of the Bahrain GP weekend saw Fernando Alonso top the timesheets with Nico Rosberg in the Mercedes being second quickest. Mark Webber had a better morning, finally getting some good running in the Red Bull and Schumacher is looking a bit more on form with a solid 4th fastest time, not bad at all.

Renault, when driven by Kubica continues to do well as does Nico Hulkenberg, the most convincing of recent F1 rookies.  Don't overlook Force India either, both their drivers have been in the thick of it so far this weekend.  Thankfully, it looks like 2010 is going to be as close as 2009.

Other points to note; Timo Glock's front wheel came off, which was rather embarrassing for the new team, but please spare a thought for Karun Chandhok who's likely to not take part in qualifying or the race at all after failing to make it round for the mandatory few laps in practice.  Seems that after being promised 26 cars, then having 24 with USF1's failure, we now have 23 with the Hispania team being a bit late with their preparations.

Despite rumour of them 'doing a Brawn' Sauber aren't looking particularly quick so far in any of the practice sessions, that said it will still be good to see Kamui's aggressive style come race day on Sunday, no matter if he's 3rd or 23rd...

Here's the complete timesheet for the final free practice:

Qualifying is starts at 11am GMT, with BBC coverage in the UK starting at 10.10am on BBC1.  Tune in to see who's going to be leading the way through the desert and follow Badger's commentary via Twitter.

For those of you who like numbers, here's the practice 'super-grid' showing each driver, their time in each session and average time, ordered by overall fastest time from the 3 sessions.  Click it to make it bigger!