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Webber puts Red Bull back on top in FP3

Mark Webber returned Red Bull to the top of the times in the final practice session for the 2010 Belgian Grand Prix.

The Australian made full use of a drying track to set a laptime of 1:46.106, just over a tenth of a second ahead of the McLaren of Lewis Hamilton.

However, it was not all plain sailing for the Milton Keynes-based team when Sebastian Vettel suffered an airbox issue, whilst entering the pits, and was forced to switch his engine off. Despite this, the German still managed to finish the session in third.

Jenson Button was fourth in the sister McLaren with Robert Kubica continued to shine for Renault in sixth.

The Ferrari duo of Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa could repeat the pace shown in Friday’s two practice sessions and had to settle for sixth and seventh respectively.

Force India remain very much the dark horse for this weekend, with Adrian Sutil once again setting competitive times. The German driver was eighth in the session, with Nico Hulkenberg (Williams) and Kamui Kobayashi (Sauber) rounding off the top ten.

Although the drivers had the luxury of a drying track for the majority of the session, weather predictably worsened with around a quarter of an hour to go – preventing anymore competitive running for the day.

Overall, the session passed with little incident, with Fernando Alonso losing the back end of his F10 at Pouhon early in the session, and both Lewis Hamilton and the Lotus of Jarno Trulli going wide at Bus stop, as the rain began to fall.

Michael Schumacher was one of only a handful of drivers to emerge on track in the wet conditions – but lost time when he slid off at Eau Rouge.

Pos Driver      Team                  Time       Gap    Laps
1.  Webber      Red Bull-Renault      1:46.106            10
2.  Hamilton    McLaren-Mercedes      1:46.223   +0.117   17
3.  Vettel      Red Bull-Renault      1:46.396   +0.290   12
4.  Button      McLaren-Mercedes      1:46.397   +0.291   17
5.  Kubica      Renault               1:46.492   +0.386   17
6.  Alonso      Ferrari               1:46.627   +0.521   11
7.  Massa       Ferrari               1:46.962   +0.856   10
8.  Sutil       Force India-Mercedes  1:47.064   +0.958   15
9.  Hülkenberg  Williams-Cosworth     1:47.160   +1.054   16
10. Kobayashi   Sauber-Ferrari        1:47.296   +1.190   17
11. de la Rosa  Sauber-Ferrari        1:47.388   +1.282   15
12. Petrov      Renault               1:47.406   +1.300   15
13. Barrichello Williams-Cosworth     1:47.512   +1.406   14
14. Schumacher  Mercedes              1:47.695   +1.589   16
15. Rosberg     Mercedes              1:47.837   +1.731    9
16. Buemi       Toro Rosso-Ferrari    1:47.905   +1.799   20
17. Alguersuari Toro Rosso-Ferrari    1:47.981   +1.875   18
18. Liuzzi      Force India-Mercedes  1:48.692   +2.586    8
19. Trulli      Lotus-Cosworth        1:50.600   +4.494   14
20. Senna       HRT-Cosworth          1:51.133   +5.027    9
21. Kovalainen  Lotus-Cosworth        1:51.384   +5.278   14
22. Di Grassi   Virgin-Cosworth       1:51.517   +5.411   13
23. Glock       Virgin-Cosworth       1:51.669   +5.563   10
24. Yamamoto    HRT-Cosworth          1:52.001   +5.895   13

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