Monaco, FP3: Vettel edges Mercedes duo in final practice session

Sebastian Vettel edged out Mercedes’ Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton to claim top spot in the final free practice session ahead of qualifying for the Monaco Grand Prix.

After rain and red flags had disrupted Thursday’s second practice session there was plenty of work to catch up on in final practice and in a change to the usual format of teams beginning with longer runs on the prime tyre, the Mercedes duo began the session on the option tyre.

With the bulk of the field sticking with the traditional running on the soft tyre, Hamilton, on the supersoft, claimed P1 with ease and over the course of a 10-lap run he made steady gains to eventually head to the pit lane with a best time of 1:16.705 under his belt. Rosberg did likewise to finish his opening run with a time of 1:17.271, half a second adrift of his team-mate.

Behind the supersoft-shod Mercedes, Kimi Raikkonen was the quickest of the soft tyre runners at this point, the Finn logging a best lap on 1:18.406 on the yellow-banded tyres to sit 1.7s adrift of Hamilton. Vettel briefly held P4 but then the Ferraris were split by Red Bull Racing’s Daniel Ricciardo.

Having sampled the soft tyre, Raikkonen was quickly on the radio asking for an early switch to supersofts. When he emerged, 25 minutes into the session, he immediately improved closing to within seven tenths of a second of Hamilton’s time.

It was as close as Raikkonen would get, however. One his next lap he lost control on the entry to Sainte Devote and clipped the wall with the rear left wheel of his Ferrari.

The car was swiftly removed by the marshals and the action resumed with most drivers switching to supersofts for a medium length run. The Mercedes, however, went to soft tyres and Rosberg managed to run slightly quicker on the prime tyre than during his opening outing on the option.

With a quarter hour left in the session the drivers then retreated to the garage to prepare for a final qualifying simulation on supersofts.

And it was Vettel who made the most of his final laps. While Rosberg and Hamilton swapped purple times in the middle sector but failed to improve in S1 or S3, the Ferrari driver set purple times in all three sectors to record a lap of 1:16.143 which put him 0.562 clear of Hamilton.

Rosberg improved to take P2 with a lap of 1:16.361 that left him +0.218 to Vettel, but Hamilton, complaining of less grip than earlier in the session, failed to challenge and had to settle for P3.

Behind them, Red Bull Racing’s Daniel Ricciardo was fourth quickest, almost a second down on former team-mate Vettel, while Carlos Sainz took fifth place, just over a tenth further back.

Sainz’s team-mate Max Verstappen had looked poised for a good showing, but 20 minutes before the end of the session he made a mistake in the final corner and hit the wall, damaging his rear wing.

Raikkonen finished the session in P6, despite not making a final qualifying run, while seventh place went to Daniil Kvyat in the second Red Bull. Jenson Button gave McLaren hope of a Q3 berth in qualifying by claiming eighth place with a lap of 1:17.767, which while it was 1.624s off Vettel’s time was two hundredths of a second quicker than ninth-placed Verstappen and four hundredths of a second clear of Lotus’ Romain Grosjean in tenth place.