Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFormula 1

Rosberg sets pace in busy final practice

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Nico Rosberg set the pace of a busy final practice session for the Japanese Grand Prix as teams got their first dry running of the weekend.

Wet weather throughout Friday ensured there were no lap times set on slick tyres in the first two practice sessions, leaving the teams with just one hour to work on set-ups before this afternoon's qualifying session. Teams took a number of different approaches to FP3 but all carried out a low fuel run at some stage, with Rosberg setting the benchmark with a 1:33.995.

Lewis Hamilton ensured it was a Mercedes one-two as the team bounced back from its struggles in Singapore, with the championship leader ending up 0.3s slower than his team-mate. However, Mercedes didn't enjoy a major advantage in terms of lap time, with Daniel Ricciardo third and only 0.2s slower than Hamilton.

The Williams pair of Valtteri Bottas and Felipe Massa were fourth and fifth respectively, both getting within a second of Rosberg's best time.

While the two Mercedes drivers had set their best laps with around 20 minutes of the session to go, Ferrari opted to run later in the session despite having already completed laps on the medium tyre. Kimi Raikkonen's best lap left him sixth on the timesheets - a full second slower than Rosberg - while Sebastian Vettel was eighth behind Toro Rosso's Max Verstappen.

Romain Grosjean and Carlos Sainz completed the top ten as the only other drivers within two seconds of the fastest lap. Sainz was the busiest driver of the session, completing 29 laps in the hour of running available.

McLaren enjoyed a relatively competitive final practice on a circuit unlikely to suit its car, with Jenson Button 12th. However, Fernando Alonso - who was 16th - has previously admitted the team rarely has more performance to exploit when it comes to qualifying compared to its rivals.

While Ricciardo was up in third place, Daniil Kvyat had a scruffy session as he ran wide at Degner and Spoon, while later locking up heavily on hard tyres in to the final chicane and wearing his front right down to the canvas. Kvyat ended the session in 14th place, without a representative medium tyre lap time.

AS IT HAPPENED: Japanese Grand Prix FP3

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Pos	Driver	Team	Time	Laps
01	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1:33.995	19
02	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1:34.292	20
03	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull	1:34.497	22
04	Valtteri Bottas	Williams	1:34.797	27
05	Felipe Massa	Williams	1:34.934	25
06	Kimi Raikkonen	Ferrari	1:35.082	16
07	Max Verstappen	Toro Rosso	1:35.160	26
08	Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	1:35.222	16
09	Romain Grosjean	Lotus	1:35.602	20
10	Carlos Sainz	Toro Rosso	1:35.963	29
11	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India	1:36.110	19
12	Jenson Button	McLaren	1:36.174	15
13	Marcus Ericsson	Sauber	1:36.199	19
14	Daniil Kvyat	Red Bull	1:36.294	23
15	Pastor Maldonado	Lotus	1:36.307	21
16	Fernando Alonso	McLaren	1:36.360	18
17	Sergio Perez	Force India	1:36.430	21
18	Felipe Nasr	Sauber	1:36.919	24
19	Will Stevens	Manor	1:39.653	24
20	Alexander Rossi	Manor	1:39.819	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.