» Vettel beats Mercedes in FP3

Sebastian Vettel has ended the final practice session for the Monaco Grand Prix fastest ahead of the Mercedes duo of Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg.

The German’s time was just shy of Daniel Ricciardo’s best effort in FP2 on Thursday, although he did manage to improve on his own Thursday practice time by 1.6 seconds.

Despite leading for the majority of the second half of the session, Ricciardo was heavily disrupted by yellow flags and traffic so he was unable to show off Red Bull’s pace and ended up in fourth position, 0.157 seconds off Vettel’s time.

His teammate Max Verstappen pushed a little too hard in the latter stages of practice when he locked his front right brakes and skidded into the barriers on the approach to Massenet. Although he was carrying quite a bit of speed, the teenager didn’t do any significant damage to his Red Bull Racing RB12.

The Toro Rosso pairing of Daniil Kvyat and Carlos Sainz were again in the mix finishing in sixth and seventh position respectively. While both drivers set their best time on the ultra-soft tyre like the rest of the field, Kvyat and Sainz spent the early part of the session running on the super-softs to simulate race conditions.

Kimi Räikkönen finished almost a second off his teammate’s pace in ninth position, splitting the Force India duo of Sergio Pérez and Nico Hülkenberg.

There were many mistakes being made towards the end of the session as drivers tested the limit of both their cars and the circuit. Vettel almost lost control of his Ferrari under braking coming out of the tunnel but made an impressive save.

Pérez, Kvyat and Pascal Wehrlein all out-braked themselves around the circuit and were forced to use the run-off exits.

Jolyon Palmer took too much kerb at the Swimming Pool complex and spun his Renault, however he was lucky to get away with little more than light damage to his rear wing.

FORMULA 1 GRAND PRIX DE MONACO 2016 – FREE PRACTICE 3 RESULTS
	Driver	Team / Entry	Result	Laps
1.	Sebastian Vettel	Scuderia Ferrari SF16-H	1:14.650	25
2.	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 W07 Hybrid	+ 0.018	24
3.	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 W07 Hybrid	+ 0.122	29
4.	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull Racing Tag Heuer RB12	+ 0.157	22
5.	Max Verstappen	Red Bull Racing Tag Heuer RB12	+ 0.431	17
6.	Daniil Kvyat	Scuderia Toro Rosso Ferrari STR11	+ 0.609	23
7.	Carlos Sainz Jr	Scuderia Toro Rosso Ferrari STR11	+ 0.674	26
8.	Sergio Pérez	Sahara Force India Mercedes VJM09	+ 0.718	21
9.	Kimi Räikkönen	Scuderia Ferrari SF16-H	+ 0.905	22
10.	Nico Hülkenberg	Sahara Force India Mercedes VJM09	+ 1.016	20
11.	Felipe Massa	Williams Martini Racing Mercedes FW38	+ 1.418	29
12.	Fernando Alonso	McLaren-Honda MP4-31	+ 1.607	24
13.	Jenson Button	McLaren-Honda MP4-31	+ 1.648	23
14.	Valtteri Bottas	Williams Martini Racing Mercedes FW38	+ 1.697	21
15.	Esteban Gutiérrez	Haas F1 Ferrari VF-16	+ 1.756	23
16.	Kevin Magnussen	Renault Sport F1 Team RS16	+ 1.762	13
17.	Romain Grosjean	Haas F1 Ferrari VF-16	+ 1.877	27
18.	Felipe Nasr	Sauber F1 Team Ferrari C35	+ 2.217	23
19.	Marcus Ericsson	Sauber F1 Team Ferrari C35	+ 2.388	32
20.	Jolyon Palmer	Renault Sport F1 Team RS16	+ 2.832	17
21.	Pascal Wehrlein	Manor Racing Mercedes MRT5	+ 2.945	32
22.	Rio Haryanto	Manor Racing Mercedes MRT5	+ 3.530	34