The final practice session of the Korean Grand Prix (Part 6)
With just 5 minutes remaining in the session, there were 23 drivers out on the track and it seemed that all of them wanted to run on their soft tyres. Nico Hulkenberg was the only driver that stayed in the pits to watch the show.
Kobayashi was up as the 11th quickest driver as he took the advantage of the soft tyres while Rubens Barrichello improved his time but was still down in 13th place with a lap of 1m39.944s.
Hamilton was on a good lap with the fastest first sector but made a major mistake at Turn 10 as he encountered heavy traffic and was unable to improve on this time. Tonio Liuzzi improved his time but remained in 18th place with a 1m41.591s lap
as Barrichello improved again and this time moved up to 8th position in the Williams after posting a 1m39.192s.
Button took the fastest time on soft tyres with a 1m38.149s but Kubica stormed the start finish line with a 1m37.932s lap. The drivers now started to push even more and Sebastian Vettel got wide giving a display of how hard he is trying near Turn 14 and
almost lost control of his Red Bull Renault.
Alonso had a wild moment in the traffic as he was help up by Rosberg’s Mercedes and as a result, the Spaniard got furious. Vettel was lucky to keep control of his RB6 and avoided contact with the retaining barrier while Kubica was on course again for another
major improvement.
Kubica clocked in at a 1m37.354s to comfortably top the times as the flags came out but there were some cars still on their flying lap.
The order was Kubica at the front with Button in second followed by Hamilton in third, Rosberg fourth and Webber fifth as the teams awaited the final results. Alonso finally got a clear lap and grabbed the second quickest time as the order started to change
rapidly.
Webber was not up to third on his final attempt with a lap of 1m37.441s while Hamilton just fell short on his late attempt with a 1m37.402 as a result of the mistake that he made at Turn 17. Sebastain Vettel aborted his final run after he had a grassy moment
at Turn 14 as he lost control of his Red Bull.
Hulkenberg surprisingly improved to eighth position on his final lap with a time of 1m38.501s and the cars were now heading around to make practice starts from the grid.
Alonso reported his encounter with Rosberg on the radio after almost colliding with the German. Robert Kubica ended a frantic flurry of laps at the end of the session and topped the list with a time of 1m37.354s while Hamilton finished in second place for
McLaren followed by Alonso, Webber and Rosberg in 3rd, 4th and 5th positions respectively.
Massa was in sixth place in the second Ferrari ahead of Button, Hulkenberg, Schumacher and Sutil in 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th places respectively to complete the top 10 standings.
Vettel was the only championship runner to finish under the top 10 places as the German aborted his final run after the chequered flag was waved to end up in 16th place. The stewards stated that the organizers will be looking at the soft concrete
patch at Turn 16 but there was little that they could do to harden it before the qualifying session.
The qualifying session was expected to take place in a couple of hours after the final practice session on Saturday. Since Vettel was not able to complete his final lap, he might be face some problems getting used to the braking points on the new Korean
International circuit during the qualifying session.
However, it was an entertaining session and it seems that up until now, the McLaren drivers had the edge over Ferrari and Red Bull at the inaugural Korean Grand Prix weekend.
Tags: