Austin, FP3: Hamilton maintains control in final practice in US

Lewis Hamilton maintained his dominance of the US grand prix weekend timesheets, ending final practice some eight tenths of a second ahead of team-mate Nico Rosberg.

With temperatures at the Circuit of the Americas rarely rising beyond 12 degrees during the session, drivers struggled to get heat into their brakes and tyres.

The difficulties appeared to affect Mercedes particularly, however. Hamilton and Rosberg spent the first half of the session only making exploratory runs, with the German asking his team if they were happy with the brakes. The reply was that conditions weren’t perfect but that they should attempt to run to improve on his 18th position.

Hamilton was faring better, rising to second behind mid-session pacesetter Daniel Ricciardo. He set about bettering that but made a mistake and spun in Turn 12.

After set-up changes Rosberg returned to the track but he still seemed troubled by brake issues and a messy lap in which he went wide in Turns 11 and 12 saw him retreat to pit lane again for more work, this time on a glazed brake disc.

In the meantime the rest of the field was discarding the prime medium tyre and switching to the quicker options soft compound.

Fernando Alonso was the first to feel the benefit, the Ferrari driver jumping to the top of the order with a lap of 1:39.108. That was quicker than Ricciardo by half a second, despite the Spaniard putting in a scruffy lap.

Williams Valtteri Bottas soon dislodged the Ferrari man, his lap 1:38.437 being seven tenths faster than Alonso’s previous benchmark. The Spaniard’s team-mate Kimi Raikkonen slotted into third place as Alonso improved and closed to within three tenths of Bottas. The Mercedes drivers were still oddly out of contention, however, with Hamilton slipping to ninth as the softy-tyre times came in and Rosberg languishing in P17.

Hamilton returned to the track for his option tyre runs with around eight minutes left on the clock and promptly surged to the top of the timesheet, his lap of 1:37.107s being 1.1s faster than second-place Felipe Massa in the Williams.

Rosberg then joined his team-mate at the top of the order though not as closely as would normal be expected. The German could only manage a lap 0.8s slower than his title rival’s.

He improved in the first two sectors of his final flyers but lost time at the end of the lap and the order stayed the same, with Hamilton ahead of Rosberg by over eight tenths. Massa held third spot, though 1.1s down on Hamilton, with Bottas a further two tenths back.

Alonso was fifth for Ferrari, with Red Bull Racing’s Ricciardo sixth. Nico Hulkenberg showed good pace for Force India with seventh place ahead of Adrian Sutil, who impressed for Sauber. Kimi Raikkonen was ninth in the second Ferrari, a full two seconds adrift of Hamilton, with Jenson Button tenth for McLaren.