Raikkonen Fastest in Practice 3

With heavy cloud covering the circuit as the practice began, many teams decided to stay in their garages and most drivers only came out within the last ten minutes of the 45-minute session.

When they did, McLaren, who had finished fastest in both Friday sessions, were back on top with Raikkonen in commanding form as he set a time of 1:20.975 to finish 0.427 seconds ahead of Alonso.

Briton Jenson Button continued the good form he showed for BAR-Honda on Friday morning to set third fastest time but was more than one second behind session leader Raikkonen.

Giancarlo Fisichella was fourth fastest in the second Renault with Juan Pablo Montoya fifth in the second McLaren and Takuma Sato sixth in the second BAR-Honda.

Felipe Massa finished seventh fastest in his Sauber, just ahead of World Champion Michael Schumacher, who was in eighth place some 1.521 seconds off the pace.

Christian Klien was ninth fastest for Red Bull, his British teammate David Coulthard down in 11th place, while Ralf Schumacher completed the top ten runners in his Toyota.

Christijan Albers was one of the drivers out early but he spun his Minardi at Club corner without even completing a lap and, with 15 minutes gone, nobody had set a time.

Jacques Villeneuve was the first to set a time, with 27 minutes left to run, but with 15 minutes left Alonso had moved to the top with Villeneuve and Patrick Friesacher the only other time setters.

Fisichella spun and continued at Copse after setting the second fastest time then both Barrichello and David Coulthard went off track at Chapel but returned.

With around five minutes to go, when a flurry of cars came out on track, Alonso and Raikkonen were separated by just one thousandth of a second but the Finn moved ahead with three minutes left to run.

Pos  Driver        Team                  Time                  Laps
 1.  Raikkonen     McLaren-Mercedes  (M)  1:20.975                7
 2.  Alonso        Renault           (M)  1:21.402  +    0.427    9
 3.  Button        BAR-Honda         (M)  1:21.996  +    1.021    6
 4.  Fisichella    Renault           (M)  1:22.331  +    1.356    9
 5.  Montoya       McLaren-Mercedes  (M)  1:22.377  +    1.402    5
 6.  Sato          BAR-Honda         (M)  1:22.389  +    1.414   12
 7.  Massa         Sauber-Petronas   (M)  1:22.413  +    1.438   14
 8.  M.Schumacher  Ferrari           (B)  1:22.496  +    1.521    8
 9.  Klien         Red Bull-Cosworth (M)  1:22.645  +    1.670    6
10.  R.Schumacher  Toyota            (M)  1:22.775  +    1.800    7
11.  Coulthard     Red Bull-Cosworth (M)  1:23.026  +    2.051    8
12.  Barrichello   Ferrari           (B)  1:23.182  +    2.207    8
13.  Villeneuve    Sauber-Petronas   (M)  1:23.191  +    2.216   12
14.  Trulli        Toyota            (M)  1:23.458  +    2.483    4
15.  Heidfeld      Williams-BMW      (M)  1:23.480  +    2.505    7
16.  Webber        Williams-BMW      (M)  1:23.705  +    2.730    5
17.  Monteiro      Jordan-Toyota     (B)  1:23.820  +    2.845   13
18.  Karthikeyan   Jordan-Toyota     (B)  1:24.230  +    3.255    8
19.  Albers        Minardi-Cosworth  (B)  1:25.007  +    4.032   13
20.  Friesacher    Minardi-Cosworth  (B)  1:25.696  +    4.721   15

All timing unofficial