Sebastian Vettel of Red Bull was quickest in Formula One's last practice session ahead of Saturday's qualifying for the Spanish Grand Prix.

The two-time defending world champion set the pace with a lap of 1 minute, 23.168 seconds at a Catalunya Circuit that was quickly heating up, causing tires to disintegrate and providing an obstacle for drivers.

Vettel is coming off his first pole position of the season in Bahrain and is looking for a second straight victory at the first European race of the season.

The German driver led Pastor Maldonado of Williams by under two-tenths of a second, with Kamui Kobayashi of Sauber, teammate Mark Webber and Sergio Perez of Sauber all within half a second of F1's points leader.

Drivers were struggling to find the right balance between the hard and soft tires with track temperature reaching 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) and expected to rise further for qualifying. While there were no dramatic spins like at Friday practice, staying on track proved a challenge to several drivers ahead of Sunday's 66-lap race.

Fernando Alonso of Ferrari was sixth with a lap of 1:23.807. Local fans hope the two-time F1 champion can provide a fifth different winner from five races in what has been an unpredictable season so far.

But Vettel's Red Bull team looks poised to seize control with Jenson Button in eighth place and McLaren teammate Lewis Hamilton 16th. Kimi Raikkonen was ninth, while fellow Lotus driver Romain Grosjean completed only two laps before coming off with a fuel-pressure problem.

Nico Rosberg was 10th and Michael Schumacher 17th for Mercedes.

Vettel is four points in front of second-place Hamilton, who is looking for his first victory of the season and first at the Spanish GP. Webber, who has taken pole here the past two years, trails his teammate by five points. Button and Alonso are 10 points behind the leader.

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ANCIENT OLYMPIA (Greece) - The flame that will burn during the London Games was lit at the birthplace of the ancient Olympics today, heralding the start of a torch relay that will culminate with the opening ceremony on July 27.

Actress Ino Menegaki, dressed as a high priestess, stood before the 2,600-year-old Temple of Hera, and after an invocation to Apollo, the ancient Greeks' Sun God, used a mirror to focus the sun's rays and light a torch.

The triangular torch is designed to highlight the fact that London is hosting the Olympics for the third time. It also staged the games in 1908 and 1948.

Under bright sunny skies there was no need for the backup flame that was used during the final rehearsal for the Olympic torch lighting a day earlier.

After the choreographed ceremony, the priestess handed the flame to the first torchbearer, Greek swimmer and Olympic silver medalist Spyros Gianniotis.

The 32-year-old Gianniotis, the Liverpool-born son of a Greek father and a British mother, was the first of 490 torchbearers who will carry the flame across 1,800 miles of Greek soil before the flame is handed to London organisers on May 17 in Athens.

Gianniotis then handed over the torch to 19-year-old Alex Loukos, born of a Greek father and British mother and raised in the east London borough of Newham next to the Olympic Park.

"It is an unbelievable honour to be a torchbearer ... Especially carrying the flame in Olympia and representing the city of London," Loukos said. "I have grown up with London 2012 - from helping with the bid in Singapore when I was 12, to witnessing the incredible regeneration of my home in East London."

The final torchbearers for the Greek relay will be two veteran athletes: Greek weightlifter and three-time Olympic gold medalist Pyrros Dimas - who was elected a Socialist member of Parliament on Sunday - and former Chinese gymnastics champion Li Ning.

From Greece, the flame will travel to Britain for a 70-day torch relay covering another 8,000 miles across the United Kingdom. In contrast to the two previous Summer Games, where the Olympic flame relay went around the globe, it will leave the UK only once to pass though Ireland on June 6.

The relay will end at the Olympic Stadium during the opening ceremony with the lighting of the cauldron. The games will run through Aug 12.

It is the second time London officials have come to Ancient Olympia for a flame lighting. London also received the flame before the 1948 Olympics.

"In 1948, shortly after the Second World War, my predecessor stood where I am today and made the first tentative steps in turning the world from war to sport," London organising committee chief Sebastian Coe said. "We find ourselves in challenging times again and turn to sport once more to connect the world in a global celebration of achievement and inspiration."

Also attending the ceremony was International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge.

"With this ceremony, we begin the final countdown to a dream that came to life seven years ago in Singapore," he said, referring to the city where London beat Paris, Madrid, New York and Moscow to secure the games in 2005. "London is ready to welcome the world for the third time."

This was the final lighting ceremony Rogge will attend as IOC president. He will step down next year, at the end of his third four-year term.

Yesterday, Rogge was made an honorary citizen of Ancient Olympia, in a ceremony that also marked the reopening of the museum of Ancient Olympia. AP

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The long-awaited BlackBerry 10 took a step closer to becoming reality on Tuesday, when Research In Motion made an early version available to developers.

RIM (RIMM) claims that BlackBerry 10 will put its smartphone platform on par with those that have outpaced it -- Apple's (AAPL, Fortune 500) iPhone and Google's (GOOG, Fortune 500) Android -- but the software has been chronically delayed.

It is now scheduled to be released to the public in the fall. Meanwhile, BlackBerry's market share is in freefall.

RIM gave the world the first glimpse at its make-or-break software at the company's annual BlackBerry World developers conference on Orlando. As CEO Thorsten Heins showed off some of BlackBerry 10's capabilities, each feature drew enthusiastic applause from the attendees.

The most impressive new feature is BlackBerry's redesigned user interface. The clean design features "cascades," which let users flip through apps with a simple swipe gesture, replacing a back key or physical button.

By swiping left, a user can navigate to the previous screen or app, and by swiping right, a user can jump forward.

"No one else can do this," Heins stated proudly at the event. He described the capability as being able to "float through menus." All the apps continue to run in the background, finally bringing true multitasking to BlackBerry apps.

Related story: RIM unveils new OS, but no new devices

The keyboard has always been one of BlackBerry's strengths, but the smartphone world is trending towards typing on glass. RIM said it is determined to maintain its competitive advantage. It demonstrated several improvements to its on-screen keyboard software, including gestures that make one-hand typing a bit easier.

As a user types, the keyboard begins to predict the next word that will be entered, which can be selected by tapping that word as it appears and swiping up. Users can swipe across the keyboard to the left to delete a word, and gestures can be used to type in numbers and punctuation.

RIM also unveiled a cool new feature for its camera software -- a key fixture in the latest smartphones, but one on which BlackBerry has fallen behind the curve.

BlackBerry 10 devices will begin taking temporary photos in the background when the camera app is opened. That's a feature available on some of the newest Android phones from HTC. But RIM took it a step further: If someone was blinking in a photo, a user can tap on that person's face and scroll back in time to find an image where the person had their eyes open.

Beyond those three features, RIM didn't demonstrate much -- and it didn't show off anything revolutionary.

Even if the remaining features and capabilities impress, RIM faces a steep uphill battle. It is now in a distant fourth place in the smartphone race, trailing Samsung, Apple and even lowly Nokia (NOK), according to a report from IDC released Tuesday.

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