GP – Free Practice 3: Kovalainen has his say

It is Heikki Kovalainen for McLaren who set the pace during the final practice session at Hockenheim as part of the German Grand Prix.

The Finn edged out Felipe Massa’s Ferrari by 0.072 seconds, with Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso’s Renault, and the impressive Sebastian Vettel (Toro Rosso), consistently performing well in practice sessions. This completes the top 5 of this session.

Kovalainen was the man to beat for a good part of the session with any type of tires. It was Vettel who was the closest to the Finn during a large part of the session.

The one who came to scare the former Renault driver is Felipe Massa, who with a new set of tires, recorded a time of 1’15”693.

But when the entire field was equipped with soft Bridgestone compounds for the last flying lap, Kovalainen found the necessary resources to take the lead with a time of 1:15.621, while the Brazilian did not improve his time.

The teammate of Kovalainen, Hamilton is third after two nearly perfect practice sessions. He briefly went off track this morning.

Vettel had to fight throughout the session to maintain his place in the top 5. Alonso snatched the fourth position from him in the final moments.

The second Renault of Nelson Piquet is seventh, behind Jarno Trulli for Toyota. Mark Webber (Red Bull), Kimi Räikkönen (Ferrari), and Nico Rosberg (Williams) complete the top ten. The latter was much faster at the beginning of the race.

Räikkönen was held up by yellow flags, leaving him 0.759 seconds off the leader.

BMW is not in top form with Robert Kubica who was slow on the track in the last part of the session. The Pole complained about his engine over the radio. He returned to the pits but did not come back out.

There were a few incidents like with Adrian Sutil, who made the most notable mistake when he went straight into the gravel on his last fast lap.