Track conditions leave drivers unsure

The very 'green' circuit, allied to varying fuel loads and the fact that the soft tyre was not automatically delivering more performance than the hard, meant teams and drivers were more wary than normal of making any confident predictions for the rest of the weekend.

Felipe Massa, who has won at Turkey for the past three years, said: "At this moment it is quite difficult to say how the race is going to be; how we are going to be compared to the others.

"On Friday we had many different cars running low fuel, high fuel, so it was not easy to see exactly where we are. So we need to wait until qualifying and then we'll have a better idea."

Former world champion Fernando Alonso said about his form in practice: "We just concentrated on doing some laps. We didn't play with the set-up too much because we know that the track evolution here is very big.

"It is very slippery normally on Friday with so many people going off the track. This is normal for here, so we just concentrated on doing some laps with new parts of the car and also with the tyres, but maybe that was the only conclusion - that the soft tyres didn't give us a huge performance in one timed lap like they usually do.

"So for qualifying it is not clear if it is better to use the softer tyre or the prime, so we need to double-check in final practice."

When asked why he felt that the softer tyre was not delivering the expected step forward in performance, Alonso said: "I think because here it is a very special track with all its long corners, and maybe the soft is a little bit too soft.

"You have a not perfect feeling with the car, with the rear maybe moving a little bit, maybe too soft on braking and in the corners, and that gives you less and less confidence. So it is difficult to push with the soft."