Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFormula 1

Hamilton heads Vettel amid Red Bull woes

Lewis Hamilton set an impressive pace in final practice for the Australian Grand Prix as Red Bull struggled.

On the soft tyre runs, Hamilton was the only driver to drop below 1m28s as he posted a 1:27.867. Hamilton could have gone even quicker as he set two fastest sectors on his second flying lap before pitting, but he held an advantage of 0.7s over the rest of the field.

Having been quickest in both sessions on Friday, Nico Rosberg struggled somewhat on Saturday as he was a second slower than his team-mate. Rosberg failed to get the most out of his soft tyres, barely improving on his best medium tyre time and ending up third quickest behind Sebastian Vettel. The Mercedes looked a handful on the medium compound, with both drivers running off track.

Ferrari continued to show encouraging pace, with Vettel a quarter of a second faster than Rosberg while team-mate Kimi Raikkonen was also in the top six alongside the two Williams cars.

At the other end of the times, however, Red Bull and McLaren both had frustrating sessions. Daniil Kvyat was only able to complete six laps and was slowest of those who set a time as he had a strange off track moment when he locked his front wheels at extremely low speed and slid straight on at the penultimate corner for an unusual amount of time.

Daniel Ricciardo fared little better, with his car stopping at the pit lane exit and having to be wheeled back as Red Bull failed to improve on Friday's problems, with team principal Christian Horner describing the day as "a shocker".

Ricciardo and Kvyat were separated by the two McLarens, with Kevin Magnussen the faster of the two but still over 3.5s off the overall pace. Force India - which by the team's own admission is a few steps behind with the VJM08 - was quicker than both Red Bull and McLaren in FP3.

Track conditions appeared tricky throughout the session, with a number of drivers running off during the hour. Marcus Ericsson had the most spectacular moment as he lost the rear of his Sauber exiting Turn 11 and slid sideways at high speed but managed to avoid making contact with the walls on either side of the track.

Aside from the two Mercedes', both Lotus drivers had a number of off-track moments as well as Carlos Sainz Jr in the Toro Rosso.

Click here for Saturday's gallery from the Australian Grand Prix

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Pos	Driver	Team	Time	Gap	Laps
01	L. Hamilton	Mercedes	1:27.867		11
02	S. Vettel	Ferrari	1:28.563	0.696	13
03	N. Rosberg	Mercedes	1:28.821	0.954	14
04	V. Bottas	Williams	1:28.912	1.045	14
05	F. Massa	Williams	1:28.988	1.121	18
06	K. Raikkonen	Ferrari	1:29.017	1.150	13
07	R. Grosjean	Lotus	1:29.481	1.614	12
08	P. Maldonado	Lotus	1:29.864	1.997	15
09	C. Sainz Jr	Toro Rosso	1:29.869	2.002	19
10	F. Nasr	Sauber	1:29.934	2.067	24
11	M. Verstappen	Toro Rosso	1:29.952	2.085	16
12	M. Ericsson	Sauber	1:30.613	2.746	21
13	N. Hulkenberg	Force India	1:30.741	2.874	14
14	S. Perez	Force India	1:30.993	3.126	17
15	D. Ricciardo	Red Bull	1:31.185	3.318	10
16	K. Magnussen	McLaren	1:31.391	3.524	14
17	J. Button	McLaren	1:31.666	3.799	13
18	D. Kvyat	Red Bull	1:32.830	4.963	6
19	W. Stevens	Manor
20	R. Merhi	Manor

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.