Four-times world champion elect Sebastian Vettel kicked off his weekend in the best possible way by topping Friday practice for the Indian Grand Prix.

The Red Bull Racing driver, who is set to secure his fourth title if he finishes fifth or better in Sunday’s race, blitzed the Buddh International circuit setting a time more than three tenths quicker than his nearest rival.

Team mate Mark Webber was his closest challenger and showed encouraging pace on both medium and soft tyre compounds.

Lotus racer Romain Grosjean continued his impressive run of form and was third fastest.

Lewis Hamilton was the quickest Mercedes in fourth just three hundredths faster than Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso.

Vettel set the precedent early in the session but it was once he switched to the soft compound rubber that saw him produce his and the day’s best time of 1:25.722s.

Both Vettel and Webber headed the timesheets and they successfully ran through stints on both the soft and medium compounds.

Grosjean once again proved to be the best of the rest and his best time was just half a second adrift of Vettel. While Hamilton posted a late effort to secure the fourth fastest time.

His team mate Nico Rosberg was sixth ahead of Ferrari’s Felipe Massa.

Lotus’ Kimi Raikkonen, and the McLaren duo of Sergio Perez and Jenson Button rounded out the top 10.

Toro Rosso’s Daniel Ricciardo was 11th quickest.

Free Practice wasn’t without incident as Williams’ Pastor Maldonado’s session ended prematurely.

A wheel nut failure saw him coast to a halt at the entry of the pit lane and he was unable to rejoin session.

The wheel nut failure comes just two weeks after the team were fined by the FIA for a wheel failure at the Japanese Grand Prix.

See below for full Practice 1 results

See below for full Practice 2 results