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 |
Image via XPB Images
Josh Kruse
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