Sutil fastest again in final Italy practice

The German, who had also been quickest on Friday afternoon, beat championship leader Jenson Button's Brawn to the top spot in the final practice hour.

It was an encouraging morning for Brawn, with Button's team-mate Rubens Barrichello fourth behind BMW driver Nick Heidfeld.

The McLarens completed the top six - early pacesetter Lewis Hamilton 0.2s quicker than team-mate Heikki Kovalainen - ahead of Tonio Liuzzi, who was an impressive seventh in the second Force India.

Most of the session was dominated by the men who had set the Friday pace: Hamilton and Sutil.

The McLaren driver emerged on top of the first runs, then chipped away at his time further with every outing, eventually reaching 1m23.929s on soft tyres with 20 minutes to go.

Sutil, still on hard tyres and up to second by this time, looked set to beat that benchmark until a mistake at the Ascaris cost him a few tenths. He quickly shrugged the error off, though, and improved to 1m23.735s to depose Hamilton next time.

The German went faster still when he grabbed soft tyres right at the end, lapping in 1m23.588s first time around even though his first two sectors were not an improvement on his hard tyre time.

That meant there was still more speed to be found, and although Button briefly grabbed first place away with a 1m23.404s, Sutil came through to beat the championship leader by 0.068s moments later.

Giancarlo Fisichella's difficult Ferrari initiation continued. For the second session in a row, the Italian was at the foot of the timesheets - but this time because he had slewed off the road and crashed into the tyre barriers at the Parabolica just before the session's halfway point.

Renault's Romain Grosjean was responsible for the other spectacular incident of the morning, as he misjudged the approach to the Ascaris and took a wild - and briefly airborne - detour over the grass.

Grosjean still managed 11th place, 0.3s and three places behind team-mate Fernando Alonso, with Timo Glock (Toyota) and Robert Kubica (BMW) between them.

Kimi Raikkonen was only 12th for crowd favourite Ferrari, while Brawn's title rival Red Bull saw its driver Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel manage only 17th and 18th places as they again ran less than most other teams.

Jaime Alguersuari also missed a lot of mileage for the sister Toro Rosso team, the Spaniard being sidelined by a gearbox problem.

Pos  Driver       Team                       Time               Laps
 1.  Sutil        Force India-Mercedes  (B)  1:23.336           21
 2.  Button       Brawn-Mercedes        (B)  1:23.404  + 0.068  21
 3.  Heidfeld     BMW-Sauber            (B)  1:23.490  + 0.154  18
 4.  Barrichello  Brawn-Mercedes        (B)  1:23.575  + 0.239  20
 5.  Hamilton     McLaren-Mercedes      (B)  1:23.633  + 0.297  18
 6.  Kovalainen   McLaren-Mercedes      (B)  1:23.803  + 0.467  20
 7.  Liuzzi       Force India-Mercedes  (B)  1:23.849  + 0.513  21
 8.  Alonso       Renault               (B)  1:23.915  + 0.579  17
 9.  Glock        Toyota                (B)  1:23.959  + 0.623  21
10.  Kubica       BMW-Sauber            (B)  1:23.996  + 0.660  18
11.  Grosjean     Renault               (B)  1:24.197  + 0.861  15
12.  Raikkonen    Ferrari               (B)  1:24.302  + 0.966  20
13.  Trulli       Toyota                (B)  1:24.326  + 0.990  17
14.  Nakajima     Williams-Toyota       (B)  1:24.392  + 1.056  20
15.  Buemi        Toro Rosso-Ferrari    (B)  1:24.572  + 1.236  23
16.  Rosberg      Williams-Toyota       (B)  1:24.621  + 1.285  21
17.  Webber       Red Bull-Renault      (B)  1:25.154  + 1.818  13
18.  Vettel       Red Bull-Renault      (B)  1:25.244  + 1.908  16
19.  Alguersuari  Toro Rosso-Ferrari    (B)  1:25.791  + 2.455  10
20.  Fisichella   Ferrari               (B)  1:25.951  + 2.615  10

All timing unofficial