Nico Rosberg continued on Saturday morning where he left off the preceding day when he clocked the fastest time for Mercedes in final practice for the British Grand Prix.
The 28-year-old German clocked a best lap of one minute and 31.487 seconds at Silverstone to outpace his nearest rival, teammate Briton Lewis Hamilton, by little more than one-tenth of a second.
The Mercedes pair demonstrated their usual dominant pace to signal their potential in qualifying as they left triple world champion German Sebastian Vettel and his Red Bull teammate Australian Mark Webber behind in third and fourth.
The leading duo had a cushion of half a second to spare.
Frenchman Romain Grosjean was fifth for Lotus ahead of another Australian Daniel Ricciardo of Toro Rosso who demonstrated his potential to succeed Webber as he took sixth place.
The session was red-flagged early on when Mexican Sergio Perez of McLaren suffered a left-rear tyre failure in an incident that threw the spotlight on Pirelli again – on the weekend when the Italian supplier was introducing a new bonding process designed to prevent delamination, as seen earlier in the year.
After a stoppage to clear debris, the session resumed but Perez was delayed until later and, when he rejoined, he maintained his reputation for impetuosity by sliding off the track at Becketts corner.
Two-time champion Spaniard Fernando Alonso also endured a ‘moment’ at the same corner on his way to taking seventh spot for Ferrari ahead of Finn Kimi Raikkonen of Lotus and the two Force Indias of German Adrian Sutil and Briton Paul di Resta.
On a dry, mild and overcast day, there was little else for the home fans to cheer as 2009 champion Jenson Button struggled to 12th in the second McLaren while Brazilian Felipe Massa in the second Ferrari finished the session parked in the pits and was only 15th.