• Italian Grand Prix - FP3

Alonso cuts Vettel's advantage in FP3

Sebastian Vettel was fastest for the second consecutive session © Getty Images

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Sebastian Vettel once again set the pace during final practice for the Italian Grand Prix at Monza as Fernando Alonso closed the gap.

Having been over 0.6s clear of the rest of the field on Friday afternoon, Vettel had a similar advantage after the hard tyre runs but saw that reduced to 0.283s after the low fuel medium tyre laps at the end of the session.

Mark Webber was third quickest - 0.317s slower than his team-mate - and less than 0.04s clear of fourth-placed Lewis Hamilton in the Mercedes. There were also strong showings from Sergio Perez in fifth and Daniel Ricciardo in sixth, while the top 13 drivers were covered by less than a second.

Nico Rosberg managed only five laps as Mercedes noticed some overheating parts on his telemetry and had to take off the floor and the gearbox in order to inspect the issue, leaving him to sit out the majority of the session.

Force India will face a busy time trying to get Paul di Resta's car repaired in time for qualifying after di Resta went off at the Parabolica halfway through the session. Di Resta appeared to lose the rear end under braking and ran straight on in to the tyre barrier, badly damaging the front of the car before complaining over the radio that something had broken.

The Ferraris also spent part of the session slipstreaming each other, with the team focusing on each driver giving the other a tow over the start line and through Curva Grande to the Roggia chicane ahead of qualifying, while radio messages from McLaren suggested it would try something similar.

Chris Medland is assistant editor at ESPNF1

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