Sebastian Vettel set the fastest lap of the final practice session for the Australian Grand Prix as Red Bull finally showed its hand.
Vettel set a time of 1:24.507 on the soft tyres, which was eight tenths quicker than team-mate Mark Webber as the world champions confirmed the outright pace of the RB7. In doing so, the German set the fastest three sector times of the session.
There was still some encouragement for McLaren as Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button finished the session third and fourth fastest respectively, albeit a second off Vettel's pace. Vitaly Petrov impressed for Renault with the fifth fastest time as many drivers did qualifying simulations, ahead of Fernando Alonso and Kamui Kobayashi.
Plenty of drivers were pushing hard in the hour-long session as they tried to understand the full characteristics of the Pirelli tyres ahead of qualifying, which led to a lot of mistakes. Button ran off the track at turn three, while Vitaly Petrov went wide at high speed exiting turn twn. Pastor Maldonado also went off in to the gravel after taking too much speed in to turn six, and his car had to be recovered after stopping just before the wall.
Mercedes will be slightly worried at being two seconds behind Vettel, although times in practice are still not completely representative of outright pace. It was a bad morning for Williams as there was little running for Rubens Barrichello, who suffered a gearbox oil leak and only managed seven laps. Sergio Perez didn't reach double figures either after he toured back to the pits midway through the session.
It was a bittersweet session for HRT, who managed to get Tonio Liuzzi on track early in the session only to have the engine cut out after three corners. They did get Narain Karthikeyan's car running though, and he completed five laps to set a time 17 seconds off the pace, although the team will have been carrying out system checks.
There were problems for Virgin too, as Timo Glock became the first driver to be forced to make an engine change after a loose bolt dropped in to a trumpet inlet. However, the team will have been heartened by being within half a second of Lotus.
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