Kubica tops final practice in Korea

Organisers oversaw improvements to the inside kerbs at Turns 16 and 18 to try and alleviate some of the issues, but there was little improvement in the levels of adhesion.

The track began the session almost as dusty as it had prior to the first runs on Friday morning and, unsurprisingly perhaps this led to more complaints from drivers over the team radios about heavy graining on the tyres - even those on the harder prime Bridgestones.

Traffic would prove to be an issue too late-on.

The Toro Rossos of Jaime Alguersuari and Sebastien Buemi were first out of the pits, and notwithstanding some brief interference from Adrian Sutil's and Vitantonio Liuzzi's Force India, they remained on the top of the pile for half of the session until the big guns hit the track.

First of those front-runners to emerge were the Ferraris, on hard tyres, and Fernando Alonso was the first to set a quick time - 1m40.795s. Shortly afterwards, Jenson Button, on a six-lap hard-tyre run of his own, went faster by 0.001s.

That stood for all of a minute before Alonso, and then Lewis Hamilton improved significantly, despite running wildly off-track, to lower the mark to 1m39.705s as seemingly every lap saw an improvement.

With ten minutes to go, everyone had completed their hard tyre runs and was back in the pits switching over to the options. This prompted a hectic last few minutes as all 24 runners had a final pop at some qualifying simulation, which saw both Hamilton and Alonso lose time to traffic. The latter incident was particularly bad as the Ferrari driver had to slam on the anchors to avoid hitting Nico Rosberg. The Spaniard did not refrain from showing his emotions with vivid hand gesticulations afterwards.

In the end though it was Renault's Kubica who got the clearest, and fastest run, his 1m37.354s lap good enough to keep him ahead of Hamilton, Alonso and Red Bull's Mark Webber - Sebastian Vettel could only manage 16th as he too ran into problems late-on.

Rosberg, who with a minute to go was second quickest, dropped to fifth ahead of Felipe Massa, Button, Nico Hulkenberg and Michael Schumacher. Sutil completed the top ten.

The German also took the honour for the most dramatic moment of the session when he ran wide at Turn 11 and skidded sideways across the run-off, in doing so throwing up clouds of dust.

Pos  Driver         Team                    Time               Laps
 1.  Kubica         Renault                 1m37.354            15
 2.  Hamilton       McLaren-Mercedes        1m37.402  + 0.048   16
 3.  Alonso         Ferrari                 1m37.426  + 0.072   15
 4.  Webber         Red Bull-Renault        1m37.441  + 0.087   13
 5.  Rosberg        Mercedes                1m37.629  + 0.275   12
 6.  Massa          Ferrari                 1m37.955  + 0.601   16
 7.  Button         McLaren-Mercedes        1m38.419  + 1.065   15
 8.  Hulkenberg     Williams-Cosworth       1m38.501  + 1.147   17
 9.  Schumacher     Mercedes                1m38.630  + 1.276   12
10.  Sutil          Force India-Mercedes    1m38.632  + 1.278   18
11.  Petrov         Renault                 1m38.668  + 1.314   14
12.  Barrichello    Williams-Cosworth       1m38.733  + 1.379   16
13.  Buemi          Toro Rosso-Ferrari      1m39.058  + 1.704   21
14.  Kobayashi      Sauber-Ferrari          1m39.145  + 1.791   16
15.  Alguersuari    Toro Rosso-Ferrari      1m39.159  + 1.805   21
16.  Vettel         Red Bull-Renault        1m39.780  + 2.426   9
17.  Heidfeld       Sauber-Ferrari          1m40.289  + 2.935   17
18.  Liuzzi         Force India-Mercedes    1m41.591  + 4.237   15
19.  Trulli         Lotus-Cosworth          1m41.623  + 4.269   15
20.  Glock          Virgin-Cosworth         1m41.853  + 4.499   17
21.  Kovalainen     Lotus-Cosworth          1m42.095  + 4.741   19
22.  di Grassi      Virgin-Cosworth         1m43.111  + 5.757   19
23.  Senna          HRT-Cosworth            1m43.417  + 6.063   19
24.  Yamamoto       HRT-Cosworth            1m43.880  + 6.526   20

All Timing Unofficial