Mortara tops final practice at Macau

The Italian's best effort of 2m10.593s, which he set halfway through the 30-minute practice session, was more than four tenths quicker than his nearest challenger, Carlin's Daniel Ricciardo, and half a second faster that the best time of the weekend at the 2008 event.

With Mortara's dashboard display not letting him know his times as he completed practice, he confessed to being taken aback by how strong a performance he had delivered.

"I didn't know my times in the car, so it was a surprise to have gone quicker than the lap record," said Mortara. "But of course I am pretty happy.

"It was a good free practice session, and we've taken another step forward with the set-up of the car. Now it will be important to have a clean qualifying session with no bad luck, because there are four or five drivers who are really strong."

Ricciardo was one of several drivers to make a set-up change to his car halfway through the session, but he was unable to improve his lap time afterwards.

ART driver Valtteri Bottas left it until the final minute of the practice session to set the third best time, while fourth fastest Brendon Hartley had been delivering some quick lap times near the end before just swiping the barriers with his right rear wheel at the Melco Hairpin with two minutes of practice remaining.

Provisional pole position holder Marcus Ericsson, who had been the quickest man in both sessions on Thursday, ended up fifth overall. ART's Sam Bird, who had a run down the escape road at Lisboa late on, was sixth.

Formula 3 Euro Series champion Jules Bianchi was once again off the pace of the front runners, finishing the session 1.1 seconds adrift in 10th place.

The session was fairly incident free, with the only major casualty being Kevin Chen, who ran into the barriers at Maternity Bend.

Pos Driver                   Team          Car     Time         Gap
 1. Edoardo Mortara          Signature     D/V     2:10.593
 2. Daniel Ricciardo         Carlin        D/V     2:11.006  +0.413
 3. Valtteri Bottas          ART           D/M     2:11.169  +0.576
 4. Brendon Hartley          Carlin        D/V     2:11.193  +0.600
 5. Marcus Ericsson          TOM's         D/T     2:11.285  +0.692
 6. Sam Bird                 ART           D/M     2:11.285  +0.692
 7. Laurens Vanthoor         Signature     D/V     2:11.294  +0.701
 8. Jean-Karl Vernay         Signature     D/V     2:11.340  +0.747
 9. Stefano Coletti          Prema         D/M     2:11.660  +1.067
10. Jules Bianchi            ART           D/M     2:11.769  +1.176
11. Carlos Huertas           Manor         D/M     2:12.129  +1.536
12. Renger van der Zande     Double R      D/M     2:12.190  +1.597
13. Takuto Iguchi            TOM's         D/T     2:12.273  +1.680
14. Alexander Sims           Double R      D/M     2:12.323  +1.730
15. Roberto Merhi            Manor         D/M     2:12.443  +1.850
16. Wayne Boyd               Hitech        D/M     2:12.586  +1.993
17. Mika Maki                Hitech        D/M     2:12.646  +2.053
18. Max Chilton              Carlin        D/V     2:12.732  +2.139
19. Koki Saga                Le Beausset   D/T     2:13.453  +2.860
20. Yuji Kunimoto            NOW           D/T     2:13.557  +2.964
21. Kei Cozzolino            Toda          D/H     2:13.616  +3.023
22. Victor Garcia            Fortec        D/M     2:13.950  +3.357
23. Alexandre Imperatori     Kolles        D/V     2:14.017  +3.424
24. Jake Rosenzweig          Fortec        D/M     2:14.056  +3.463
25. Daniel Zampieri          Prema         D/M     2:14.493  +3.900
26. Henry Arundel            Carlin        D/V     2:15.787  +5.194
27. Daniel McKenzie          Fortec        D/M     2:16.548  +5.955
28. Stef Dusseldorp          Kolles        D/V     2:16.897  +6.304
29. Michael Ho               Manor         D/M     2:20.580  +9.987
30. Kevin Chen               Double R      D/M     2:22.683  +12.090