De Marco quickest on home soil

The 19-year-old, who hails from Pordenone in northern Italy, set the session's best time in the final two minutes - though it was more than three tenths shy of Julien Jousse's time from the day's earlier practice.

Lithuanian Kazim Vasiliauskas had looked likely to top this afternoon's session after rising to the top of the timesheet half way through. But de Marco's late effort was just in time, before Jousse went off at Acque Minerale and - stuck in the gravel - forced an end to the session one minute before time.

Vasiliauskas's time remained good enough for second place, while Milos Pavlovic jumped up to third just seconds after de Marco had set his benchmark time.

Title rivals Mikhail Aleshin and Andy Soucek set the fourth and fifth best times, with Philipp Eng sixth. The other title hopefuls, Julien Jousse and Robert Wickens were 10th and 12th quickest respectively.

The top three drivers in the session were separated by less than one tenth of a second, with just half a second covering the top 10.

Earlier offs for Germans Tobias Hegewald and Jens Hoing at Tamburello had brought out yellow flags in the first sector, while the only stoppage of the session came just three minutes in when Armaan Ebrahim spun off at Rivazza.

Pos Driver                         Time          Gap
 1. Nicola de Marco                1m39.800s
 2. Kazim Vasiliauskas             1m39.841s  +0.041
 3. Milos Pavlovic                 1m39.890s  +0.090
 4. Mikhail Aleshin                1m39.952s  +0.152
 5. Andy Soucek                    1m40.029s  +0.229
 6. Philipp Eng                    1m40.077s  +0.277
 7. German Sanchez                 1m40.088s  +0.288
 8. Edoardo Piscopo                1m40.112s  +0.312
 9. Mirko Bortolotti               1m40.257s  +0.457
10. Julien Jousse                  1m40.307s  +0.507
11. Carlos Iaconelli               1m40.414s  +0.614
12. Robert Wickens                 1m40.466s  +0.666
13. Tobias Hegewald                1m40.538s  +0.738
14. Tom Gladdis                    1m40.562s  +0.762
15. Jack Clarke                    1m40.706s  +0.906
16. Sebastian Hohenthal            1m40.791s  +0.991
17. Natacha Gachnang               1m41.328s  +1.528
18. Henri Karjalainen              1m41.620s  +1.820
19. Armaan Ebrahim                 1m41.637s  +1.837
20. Alex Brundle                   1m41.873s  +2.073
21. Jolyon Palmer                  1m42.132s  +2.332
22. Jason Moore                    1m42.600s  +2.800
23. Pietro Gandolfi                1m42.604s  +2.804
24. Ollie Hancock                  1m42.695s  +2.895
25. Jens Hoing                     1m43.808s  +4.008