Mexico, FP3: Rosberg edges Hamilton in final practice in Mexico City

Nico Rosberg narrowly beat Lewis Hamilton to the top of the timesheet in final practice for the Mexican Grand Prix, the German edging his Mercedes team-mate by just over one hundredth of a second.

Third place in the session went to Red Bull Racing’s Daniel Ricciardo, while Sebastian Vettel was fourth. However, the Ferrari driver’s team-mate Kimi Raikkonen stopped 15 minutes into the session with a suspected power unit issue.

The session began with the drivers taking to the track on the medium tyres. With the track having been washed by overnight rain once again conditions were initially tricky but times rapidly improved and just with a quarter of an hour gone, Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg’s lap of 1:23.506 saw him 0.088s in front of Red Bull’s Daniil Kvat.

The yellow flag then came out for Raikkonen. The Finn reported “issues” to his team and with smoke coming from the back of his car the Ferrari pit wall told him to pull over and stop.

Kvyat then took over in P1 with a lap of 1:23.029 and soon after Rosberg slotted into second place, 0.293s behind the Russian.

The times were coming down rapidly, however, and as the half hour mark arrived Ricciardo took control with a lap of 1:22.502 , which was good enough to put him 0.227 clear of Williams’ Felipe Massa and Toro Rosso’s Max Verstappen.

The switch to the option tyres was in process, however, and Ricciardo was soon demoted as Vettel bolted on the soft rubber and eclipsed the Red Bull driver by 0.631s.

There were still drivers circulating on the medium tyre and Hamilton suddenly popped up with an impressive time of 1:21.840 to claim top spot.

His was the final move on the prime tyre and the session then moved fully to qualifying simulations and with eight minutes left on the clock Rosberg went fastest with a lap of 1:21.205 before improving to the session-best time of 1:21.083.

Hamilton, meanwhile, locked up on his first run and returned to the pit lane for fresh tyres but he couldn’t better his team-mate’s pace though they were eventually separated by just 0.014s.

With Ricciardo and Vettel third and fourth respectively, Kvyat claimed fifth, while Sergio Perez gave his home crowd hope of a good result in qualifying by taking sixth place.

Williams’ Valtteri Bottas was seventh ahead of Toro Rosso’s Carlos Sainz, with Massa ninth ahead of Hulkenberg.