2013 Monaco Grand Prix FP3: Rosberg on top, yet again

Nico Rosberg en route to his 1st place during FP3 at Monaco.

Mercedes‘ Nico Rosberg topped the time sheet at the Monaco Grand Prix FP3.

The German didn’t start for much of the session but once he came out, he stayed on for 22 laps. Team-mate Lewis Hamilton finished with a time worthy of 5th after having a decent spell at the Circuit de Monaco. The former McLaren driver put in 20 laps. Overall, it concluded a string of very positive practice sessions for the Brackley based team and they’ll be looking forward to the qualifying and race having secured promising data from both sets of tyres.

Romain Grosjean clocked second on the board after a good run but ended his session at the death after a crash in turn 1. The Frenchman looked strong throughout and apart from the incident, put in a good performance. If the Frenchman is able to make it to the qualifying session, he could challenge for a top-3 spot.

Team mate Kimi Raikkonen finished 6th. The Lotus chased the Silver Arrows in the first two sectors but in the last sector alone, they lost out by almost 0.4 seconds. This could be because of the straight-line speed the Mercs have.

Ferrari were expected to shine in FP3 by actually putting up a challenge for the Mercs but the two drivers could only manage 4th and 16th, Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa, respectively.

Felipe Massa crashed at the entry to turn 1 with a steering lock after having hit the barriers on the start-finish line before heading straight into the run-off area of turn 1 at some pace.

The incident red flagged the session for about 10 minutes before restart. Ferrari, just to be on the safe side, would have warned Alonso about possible recurrence with his car because Alonso didn’t seem like he was in it completely towards the end. He eventually finished 4th but the potential was there for everyone to see.

Red Bulls have neither had a good nor bad weekend and they showed so again with Vettel finishing 3rd and Webber 7th. Definitely an improvement over their performances on Thursday but not one enough to get pole and possibly to win.

Apart from the results, the session was marred by a few mishaps across the track. Felipe Massa commemorated the list with a nasty crash at the entry of turn 1. The Brazilian’s steering seemed to have locked forcing him straight into the barriers on the straight before being carried into the run-off barrier into turn 1.

Felipe Massa’s crash in Turn 1.

Lotus’ Romain Grosjean suffered a crash on the opposite side of where Massa did. The Frenchman lost control while trying to manoeuvre his car into turn 1. Force India’s Adrian Sutil traded paint with the barriers after losing it and sliding into the barriers. Luckily, none of the drivers involved were harmed in any way.

Kimi Raikkonen and Jean Eric-Vergne had to free themselves after being caught in escape routes while Rosberg scraped the barrier at Portier.

At the end, the drivers concluded the three sessions with Mercedes emerging the clear favourites.