Hamilton impresses in final Sochi practice

F1 Grand Prix, GP Russia, Sochi International Street Circuit

Lewis Hamilton topped the times in the final free practice session ahead of qualifying for the Russian Grand Prix. The Brit did spin off shortly after but his pace was remarkable, especially considering others needed several more laps to get the soft tyres to work.

Rosberg dominated the largest part of the session while everybody was running the medium tyre. Bottas and Massa proved well on the pace on that tyre as well, alarming the Mercedes team they may well be up for a challenge. Lewis Hamilton was third fastest, ahead of Kvyat, Alonso, Vettel, both Force India cars and Vergne.

Strangely, lots of drivers also appeared to struggle with oversteer, more than was the case on Friday. Pirelli's Paul Hembery already mentioned after FP2 that some cars showed blistering on the front tyres, which may have resulted in teams slightly modifying their setups to protect the fronts, at the expense of oversteer.

With just 15 minutes left, Kimi Raikkonen was one of the first to change tyre type, ending up just ahead of Alonso on the timesheet, even though the Spaniard's time was set on the medium. For Raikkonen, car struggles have returned with him complaining of the front end since the very beginning of the weekend, particularly on the harder tyre.

8 minutes from the end, Hamilton went fastest by a second, before spinning off the next lap on the penultimate corner. With his tyres badly flatspotted, he immediately returned to the pits.

Kevin Magnussen meanwhile hit other trouble as a driveshaft failed, eliminating him from the final part of the session.

In the closing stages, Bottas and Rosberg notably improved their times on their 7th and 6th laps on the same set of soft tyres, indicating the tyres here are slow to get up to speed, but will probably also show very little wear as well.