Ferrari's Vettel bounces back to the top in FP3!

©WRI

Sebastian Vettel showed no signs of the relative weakness that impacted his running yesterday. The Ferrari driver putting himself at the top of the timesheet in Saturday's final practice session for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

Vettel edged out Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton by 0.361s and Scuderia team mate Kimi Raikkonen by 0.402s. Max Verstappen and Valtteri Bottas rounded off the top five in a session that was red-flagged in the closing stages.

Azerbaijan Grand Prix - Free Practice 3

Pos	Driver	Team	Time	Gap	Laps
1	Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	1:43.091s		17
2	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1:43.452s	+ 0.361s	16
3	Kimi Räikkönen	Ferrari	1:43.493s	+ 0.402s	17
4	Max Verstappen	Red Bull	1:43.519s	+ 0.428s	17
5	Valtteri Bottas	Mercedes	1:43.569s	+ 0.478s	20
6	Sergio Pérez	Force India	1:43.936s	+ 0.845s	9
7	Kevin Magnussen	Haas	1:43.958s	+ 0.867s	11
8	Lance Stroll	Williams	1:44.123s	+ 1.032s	8
9	Esteban Ocon	Force India	1:44.220s	+ 1.129s	11
10	Sergey Sirotkin	Williams	1:44.534s	+ 1.443s	9
11	Fernando Alonso	McLaren	1:44.763s	+ 1.672s	12
12	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull	1:44.861s	+ 1.770s	17
13	Pierre Gasly	Toro Rosso	1:44.905s	+ 1.814s	16
14	Charles Leclerc	Sauber	1:45.218s	+ 2.127s	15
15	Romain Grosjean	Haas	1:45.261s	+ 2.170s	12
16	Carlos Sainz	Renault	1:45.432s	+ 2.341s	15
17	Nico Hülkenberg	Renault	1:45.456s	+ 2.365s	11
18	Stoffel Vandoorne	McLaren	1:45.505s	+ 2.414s	13
19	Marcus Ericsson	Sauber	1:45.910s	+ 2.819s	17
20	Brendon Hartley	Toro Rosso	1:46.186s	+ 3.095s	11

Teams headed out for their final rehearsal before qualifying under a menacing sky and a few rain drops, but the session eventually remained dry to the end.

Looking to make up for his deficit on Friday, Vettel lost no time getting up to speed this time along with his team mate, both men running on Pirelli's ultrasoft rubber.

Hamilton inserted himself between the two red cars, but the Mercedes, while appearing to enjoy better pace still suffered a deficit to its Maranello rivals in Baku's middle sector.

Verstappen just pipped Bottas for fifth, while the Dutchman's Red Bull team mate Daniel Ricciardo concluded his morning down in P12 after traffic forced the Aussie to abort a late fast run.

Force India's Sergio Perez ran once again in the top ten, putting himself sixth just in front of Haas' Kevin Magnussen.

Lance Stroll's spot in eighth place demonstrated the improving form of Williams FW41. However team mate Sergey Sirotkin suffered a hard impact with the outside wall at Turn 3 in the closing stages of the session, an incident that brought out the red flag with just under ten minutes remaining on the board.

The Russian's previous time remained good enough however for P10, just behind ninth-place man Esteban Ocon.

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Michael Delaney