Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFormula 1

Ferrari, Red Bull dominate FP3 as Mercedes struggles

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Sebastian Vettel set the fastest time of final practice for the Singapore Grand Prix as Mercedes looked in genuine trouble.

After Mercedes claimed it was facing a real threat from Ferrari and Red Bull following Friday's running, FP3 appeared to back up its concern as Vettel went nearly half a second clear of the field on the supersoft tyre. Team-mate Kimi Raikkonen made it a Ferrari one-two as Red Bull emerged as its closest challenger.

Daniil Kvyat was third - 0.035s slower than Raikkonen - while Daniel Ricciardo was fourth in the second Red Bull, 0.677s off the pace. When the Mercedes pair attempted supersoft laps, the deficit was surprising as championship leader Lewis Hamilton could only set the fifth fastest time but was over 1.1s slower than Vettel.

Hamilton also made an error at Turn 7, locking up and taking to the escape road before spinning his car round and rejoining. Later in the session, Hamilton was pushing for another timed lap on supersofts - but not showing a marked improvement - when he came across a Toro Rosso at the hairpin and locked up to avoid running in to the back of the car ahead, raising his hands in frustration.

Nico Rosberg was sixth in the second Mercedes, ending the session 1.5s adrift and only 0.014s ahead of Fernando Alonso in the McLaren-Honda. Mercedes even took to Twitter to state: "There is no hiding the potential here... the pace of our rivals is genuine and very quick!"

Carlos Sainz and Max Verstappen were eighth and ninth quickest respectively for Toro Rosso despite both drivers going off at Turn 7, while Marcus Ericsson rounded out the top ten.

The fight for Q3 in qualifying looks set to be a close on, with 0.6s separating Rosberg in sixth place with Pastor Maldonado in 16th. Williams is in the middle of that group but will be worried after being unable to get either driver in to the top ten.

The two Manor drivers were again comfortably off the pace as they focused on long runs having missed out on race simulations when both Alexander Rossi and Will Stevens crashed on Friday. Rossi was almost seven seconds off the pace ahead of his first qualifying session, while Stevens didn't complete a low fuel lap.

AS IT HAPPENED: Singapore Grand Prix FP3

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Pos	Driver	Team	Time	Laps
01	Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	1:45.682	12
02	Kimi Raikkonen	Ferrari	1:46.132	12
03	Daniil Kvyat	Red Bull	1:46.167	19
04	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull	1:46.359	14
05	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1:46.802	15
06	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1:47.223	16
07	Fernando Alonso	McLaren	1:47.237	14
08	Carlos Sainz	Toro Rosso	1:47.301	18
09	Max Verstappen	Toro Rosso	1:47.464	17
10	Marcus Ericsson	Sauber	1:47.568	20
11	Valtteri Bottas	Williams	1:47.587	20
12	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India	1:47.640	16
13	Jenson Button	McLaren	1:47.715	14
14	Felipe Massa	Williams	1:47.733	21
15	Pastor Maldonado	Lotus	1:47.817	16
16	Sergio Perez	Force India	1:48.002	15
17	Romain Grosjean	Lotus	1:48.116	15
18	Felipe Nasr	Sauber	1:48.932	20
19	Alexander Rossi	Manor	1:52.588	26
20	Will Stevens	Manor	1:55.293	22

Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.