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Vettel on top in final German practice

Sebastian Vettel fired a clear message to his Red Bull team-mate Mark Webber as he set the fastest time on his final lap of Saturday morning's practice session, with a time of 1m15.103s

The German's lap was an immediate response to that of Webber, who had set a lap 0.6s slower moments prior to that. Splitting them to go second overall however was Fernando Alonso, whose own lap was only 0.284s slower than Vettel at the flag.

Ferrari and Red Bull went at it again for much of the 'serious running' towards the end of the hour as the two teams dominated the action.

The session had begun wet following intermittent rain, but by halfway through, the field was finally presented with a more-or-less dry circuit with which to hurriedly work on a qualifying set-up.

For the next 20 minutes much of the grid ran on the hard prime tyres as they sought balance, and it was Jenson Button that proved fastest through that phase with a 1m18.576s.

But that was until Vettel and Alonso emerged from the pits with 10 minutes to go - their cars shod in super-soft option Bridgestones - and the Ferrari driver lowered the mark to 1m16.805s. This inevitably triggered a frenzy of activity as virtually the entire entry list followed suit.

In the end, as the times fell out, it was Felipe Massa that completed the top four, behind the three mentioned above, ahead of Nico Rosberg, with Lewis Hamilton ending the fastest McLaren driver in sixth.

Michael Schumacher, one of many to go off at the wet Turn 6 hairpin earlier in the session, was seventh in the second Mercedes, while Rubens Barrichello, Robert Kubica and Nico Hulkenberg completed the top ten.

Button drifted back to 13th, while Adrian Sutil (fastest on Friday morning) was forced to trickle back to the pits early-on with a broken driveshaft.

The German's forced absence meant that all the new teams, lead by the Lotus cars of Jarno Trulli and Heikki Kovalainen ended a place higher on the time sheets than usual.

Pos  Driver         Team                   Time              Laps
 1.  Vettel         Red Bull-Renault       1:15.103            18
 2.  Alonso         Ferrari                1:15.387  + 0.284   21
 3.  Webber         Red Bull-Renault       1:15.708  + 0.605   16
 4.  Massa          Ferrari                1:15.854  + 0.751   20
 5.  Rosberg        Mercedes               1:16.046  + 0.943   20
 6.  Hamilton       McLaren-Mercedes       1:16.207  + 1.104   13
 7.  Schumacher     Mercedes               1:16.473  + 1.370   16
 8.  Barrichello    Williams-Cosworth      1:16.481  + 1.378   23
 9.  Kubica         Renault                1:16.646  + 1.543   20
10.  Hulkenberg     Williams-Cosworth      1:16.743  + 1.640   17
11.  Kobayashi      Sauber-Ferrari         1:16.882  + 1.779   19
12.  Buemi          Toro Rosso-Ferrari     1:16.990  + 1.887   21
13.  Button         McLaren-Mercedes       1:17.037  + 1.934   15
14.  Petrov         Renault                1:17.148  + 2.045   20
15.  de la Rosa     Sauber-Ferrari         1:17.220  + 2.117   19
16.  Alguersuari    Toro Rosso-Ferrari     1:17.341  + 2.238   21
17.  Liuzzi         Force India-Mercedes   1:17.538  + 2.435   22
18.  Kovalainen     Lotus-Cosworth         1:19.193  + 4.090   11
19.  Trulli         Lotus-Cosworth         1:19.607  + 4.504   10
20.  Senna          HRT-Cosworth           1:20.533  + 5.430    9
21.  Yamamoto       HRT-Cosworth           1:21.538  + 6.435   14
22.  di Grassi      Virgin-Cosworth        1:23.444  + 8.341   10
23.  Glock          Virgin-Cosworth        1:23.873  + 8.770    7
24.  Sutil          Force India-Mercedes                        2

All Timing Unofficial

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