F1: Button Gets A Bounce In Final Brazil Practice

Formula 1

F1: Button Gets A Bounce In Final Brazil Practice

Jenson Button replaced teammate Lewis Hamilton atop the time sheet in the final practice at Interlagos...

Jared Turner | Posted November 24, 2012 Sao Paulo (BRA)

Jenson Button of McLaren powered his way to P1 in final practice at Interlagos. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

On Saturday morning, McLaren made it a clean sweep of this weekend's three Formula One practices at Interlagos.

Only this time, it was a different McLaren driver on top.

After the British team's Lewis Hamilton paced Friday's two sessions in Brazil, it was teammate Jenson Button showing the way in Saturday's third and final practice ahead of knockout qualifying.

Button, who would like to finish the 2012 season the way he began it in Australia with a victory, laid down a quick lap of 1:13:188 to edge the Red Bull of Sebastian Vettel (1:13:245), who ended up second in all three practices here.

Red Bull's Mark Webber, Hamilton and the Lotus of Romain Grosjean completed the top five.

Paul Di Resta, Nico Hulkenberg, Fernando Alonso, Pastor Maldonado and Felipe Massa filled out the rest of the top 10.

Alonso trails Vettel by 13 points and needs an unusual turn of events to leapfrog the German and claim the World Championship in Sunday's Brazilian GP, the final event on the 2012 F1 calendar.

Lotus driver Kimi Raikkonen completed only three laps in the one-hour P3 session, his engine expiring only a quarter of the way in.

SPEED coverage of Formula One at Interlagos continues with three rounds of knockout qualifying live on the network at 11 a.m. ET.

Jared Turner is an Associate Editor for SPEED.com, covering NASCAR and Formula One, and is an Editor for TruckSeries.com. His professional motorsports writing career began in 2005.