• Hungarian Grand Prix - FP3

Grosjean heads Alonso in FP3

Romain Grosjean displayed good one-lap pace for Lotus © Sutton Images

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Romain Grosjean set the fastest time of the final practice session for the Hungarian Grand Prix as Red Bull failed to repeat its Friday dominance.

With soft tyre runs on low fuel taking place Grosjean's time of 1:20.730 left him 0.168s clear of Fernando Alonso's Ferrari. Sergio Perez was third quickest and had shown encouraging pace for McLaren but then had a heavy crash in the closing minutes as he lost the rear of the car at the high-speed Turn 11 and hit the barrier. The damage sustained to the left hand side of the McLaren will leave the team with a lot of work ahead of qualifying.

Sebastian Vettel was fourth quickest but almost 0.4s slower than Grosjean despite completing his lap later than the Lotus. However, Vettel had been carrying out a busy program as he completed 22 laps on the medium tyre, languishing in 19th place for much of the session. His final total of 27 laps was the most of the session and the yellow flags from Perez's crash prevented him from improving his best time.

Felipe Massa and Lewis Hamilton - fifth and sixth respectively - were both within half a second of Grosjean's time as the field was again closely matched with Pastor Maldonado in 12th place still less than a second off the fastest lap.

Though Grosjean was quick, team-mate Kimi Raikkonen was only 11th fastest and 0.8s slower in the other Lotus.

There were problems for Sauber as Esteban Gutierrez failed to register a time having completed just two laps. The team reported an engine problem early in the session and was unable to change the unit in time to get Gutierrez back on track.

Chris Medland is assistant editor at ESPNF1

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