Rosberg continues lead in final practice
Rosberg topped the time charts for the second time this weekend in FP3. He very narrowly beat Hamilton with 0.014s. Red Bull continued to demonstrate their good form by slotting in 3th and 4th.
Conditions were a bit better then yesterday, with the track having dried up overnight. Although the rubber laid down yesterday was washed away, times rapidly improved.
Practice got well underway early with everybody trying to get a sense of the track in conditions they will have to qualify and race for. The low grip conditions still played their part as Perez went off and several other drivers complaining about the grip levels. Early pace setters were Massa and Hulkenberg.
Raikkonen in the meanwhile suffered an engine breakdown, catching fire barely 14 minutes into the session. He’ll probably need to switch engines and perhaps take a penalty if a shiny new engine is inserted. It underlines how much cooling is put to the limit due low air density. To make matters worse, track temperature has risen since yesterday.
Halfway into the session most driver switched to the soft compound, with Ricciardo and Vettel generally swapping the top position several times. However, Hamilton then drove to the top position despite running with the medium tyres. Rosberg did almost equally impressive by posting a lap time 0.5s down on Hamilton, also on the mediums. This did look quite ominous.
However, the Mercedes drivers barely found any significant improvement when they switched to the soft tyres in the final 10 minutes. Rosberg managed to get a clean lap in, but Hamilton struggled in traffic. Despite having already taken the very best out of his soft compounds, he did manage in the end to close the gap to Rosberg down to 0.014s.
Red Bull in the meanwhile looks very comfortable in the curved sections of the track, compensating for the lack of top speed. Qualifying looks set to be a thriller if Mercedes does not find an answer to switch on the soft tyres.
