• German GP - FP3

Rosberg clear of the field in final practice

Laurence Edmondson at Hockenheim
July 19, 2014
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Nico Rosberg comfortably led the way in final practice at the German Grand Prix, clocking a time 0.601s faster than Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton.

Rosberg hooked up all three sectors to pull out a significant margin over the rest of the field, while Hamilton lost chunks of time in the first and second sectors on his flying lap. Fernando Alonso was just 0.004s off Hamilton to put Ferrari as best of the rest in an otherwise tight top ten. Track temperatures were 10C down on FP2 on Friday, but with blue skies over Hockenheim could rise again for qualifying.

The Williamses of Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas showed promise on the soft compound tyres, but failed to follow it up on the super-softs as both set times roughly 0.8s off Rosberg. McLaren's Kevin Magnussen was sixth fastest ahead of the Red Bull of Daniel Ricciardo, who failed to follow up on his Friday promise.

Kimi Raikkonen completed his super-soft run early in the session in order to give Ferrari time to fix a fuel system issue ahead of qualifying and ended up eighth in the order as a result. Sebastian Vettel's miserable home grand prix weekend continued as he was ninth fastest and a tenth of a second off team-mate Ricciardo.

Nico Hulkenberg rounded out the top ten in the Force India but is likely to have the Toro Rossos and the McLaren of Jenson Button to contend with when it comes to grabbing a place in Q3 in qualifying.

Adrian Sutil's strong weekend stuttered with an hybrid issue during the hour, while Max Chilton suffered electronics issues and Marcus Ericsson had his session blighted by a hydraulics problem.

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