Trulli fastest in final Suzuka practice

As the weather cleared after yesterday's wash-out and gave the teams a chance to complete some dry running, it was Toro Rosso rookie Buemi who emerged as the man to beat.

The Swiss driver looked set to put Toro Rosso at the top of a session result for the first time in 2009, until Trulli gave home team Toyota a boost by grabbing the top spot with his final lap.

After Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen and Trulli had taken turns on top in the early running, Buemi hit the front after 22 minutes and proceeded to go quicker and quicker.

Using the same hard tyres as everyone else on track, Buemi got down to 1m31.771s and held an advantage of 0.6-0.8s for most of the rest of the morning.

He looked set to stay in front as others failed to get within half a second of his time even on softer tyres, but then Trulli edged ahead by 0.062s with his last flying lap.

Buemi held second, with Williams's Nico Rosberg and Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel third and fourth ahead of Raikkonen.

Behind Adrian Sutil's Force India, Rubens Barrichello was two places and 0.2s ahead of Brawn team-mate Jenson Button in seventh place.

Button had an unnerving start to the session when he banged wheels with Jaime Alguersuari's Toro Rosso as he dived to the inside at the hairpin on their out-laps. The points leader escaped with minor front wing damage and was soon back on track, while Alguersuari continued unscathed and finished the session in an impressive 10th place.

While Vettel kept Red Bull in contention at the front, his team-mate Mark Webber ended the session only 19th. The Australian crashed at Degner with six minutes to go and was swiftly pushed down the order as others tried qualifying simulations.

No one else sustained any damage during the session, but Nick Heidfeld spun his BMW under braking for the hairpin and Romain Grosjean's Renault had a quick rotation coming into the chicane.

Pos  Driver        Team                      Time              Laps
 1.  Trulli        Toyota               (B)  1:31.709           24
 2.  Buemi         Toro Rosso-Ferrari   (B)  1:31.771 + 0.062   26
 3.  Rosberg       Williams-Toyota      (B)  1:32.343 + 0.634   28
 4.  Vettel        Red Bull-Renault     (B)  1:32.414 + 0.705   19
 5.  Raikkonen     Ferrari              (B)  1:32.445 + 0.736   26
 6.  Sutil         Force India-Mercedes (B)  1:32.467 + 0.758   25
 7.  Barrichello   Brawn GP-Mercedes    (B)  1:32.488 + 0.779   24
 8.  Kovalainen    McLaren-Mercedes     (B)  1:32.546 + 0.837   22
 9.  Button        Brawn GP-Mercedes    (B)  1:32.668 + 0.959   25
10.  Alguersuari   Toro Rosso-Ferrari   (B)  1:32.689 + 0.980   20
11.  Grosjean      Renault              (B)  1:32.717 + 1.008   25
12.  Heidfeld      BMW Sauber           (B)  1:32.736 + 1.027   21
13.  Alonso        Renault              (B)  1:32.742 + 1.033   21
14.  Glock         Toyota               (B)  1:32.749 + 1.040   26
15.  Nakajima      Williams-Toyota      (B)  1:32.752 + 1.043   23
16.  Hamilton      McLaren-Mercedes     (B)  1:32.789 + 1.080   19
17.  Kubica        BMW Sauber           (B)  1:32.848 + 1.139   20
18.  Fisichella    Ferrari              (B)  1:32.878 + 1.169   26
19.  Webber        Red Bull-Renault     (B)  1:32.930 + 1.221   15
20.  Liuzzi        Force India-Mercedes (B)  1:33.167 + 1.458   18

All timing unofficial