Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen picked up where he left off yesterday after setting the fastest time in the final practice session of the Bahrain Grand Prix.
Raikkonen’s time of 1:29.868 on the super soft tyres was the fastest of the session. Red Bull’s Max Verstappen was 2nd fastest 0.525s off the pace with a 1:30.393. Rounding out the top 3 was Daniel Ricciardo in the second Red Bull with a 1:30.452.
The session got off to a very slow start after driver waited for quite some time for the track temperatures to drop a bit. The session was relatively uneventful except for Sebastian Vettel who had a problem with a lose right barge board. He was back in the pits immediately and the team got to work on his car. Shortly after he was back out for a few laps and was back in the pits with an engine issue with 15mins before the end of the session. Ferrari are working on the problem but no word as to the cause of the issue.
Finishing 4th fastest was Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton 0.823s off the pace. Mercedes have been struggling all weekend with grip on the super soft tyre and Hamilton could be seen lighting up his rear tyres on his flying lap. Bottas in the second Mercedes finished the session 6th fastest behind Vettel in 5th.
The two Renaults seem to be hitting their stride with Nico Hulkenberg finishing 7th fastest ahead of team mate Carlos Sainz.
Pierre Gasly continues his good run of form this weekend with a 9th fastest finish of the session while Alonso rounded out the top 10.
With the Mercedes cars struggling for pace, qualifying will be difficult for them to set a good time and with Hamilton’s grid penalty adding to their concerns. But we’ve seen that Hamilton is able to dig deep and find pace and grip and put in a stunning lap where it counts.
Ferrari look to have the advantage, but with cooling track temps it will get very close between the top 3 teams come qualifying.
INITIAL CLASSIFICATION (END OF FP3): Raikkonen on top heading into qualifying #BahrainGP 🇧🇭 #F1 #FP3 pic.twitter.com/h2KFBKkLff
— Formula 1 (@F1) April 7, 2018
