There was a moment of concern for team boss Christian Horner during the dying
seconds as Webber considered diving up the inside of his team-mate in the
final sector, but thought better of it as the German closed the door.
Felipe Massa, fresh from his first podium in two years, underlined Ferrari’s
encouraging start by separating the two Red Bulls in fourth.
Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg were sixth and seventh for Mercedes with
Romain Grosjean and Paul Di Resta next up.
Button had topped the timesheets early on in the second McLaren, but faded to
10th by the end of the session.
Grosjean and Lotus team-mate Kimi Raikkonen were running a new exhaust system
but the Finn’s championship aspirations appear to be ever-diminishing as he
was back in 11th.
Pastor Maldonado was 12th while Kamui Kobayashi, the podium hero in Japan, was
14th, just ahead of Sauber team-mate Sergio Perez.
Jules Bianchi, stepping in for Nico Hulkenberg at Force India, was the
quickest of the four drivers given an outing in this morning’s session.
He was 13th, with Valtteri Bottas 18th for Williams, Giedo van der Garde 22nd
for Caterham and Dani Clos last for HRT, some 6.5 seconds off Hamilton’s
time, and 1.2 seconds slower than team-mate Pedro de la Rosa.