Sebastian Vettel led a Ferrari 1-2 in final practice in China but for Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo it was a morning to forget. His RB14 suffered a suspected turbo failure.
Cold temperatures, overnight rain and a strong wind made for a green track and an uncomfortable final practice session for some of the drivers. Friday’s tail wind became a head wind in some places, and a tail wind in others, as Pierre Gasly found out.
As part of the Toro Rosso youngster’s lessons, he also learnt that Astroturf holds water even when the track is completely dry.
Lewis Hamilton also discovered this as he ran wide at Turn 10, put two wheels onto the super slippery Astroturf, and around he went.
Romain Grosjean was another spinner. With many in the pit lane unsure as to what tyres could be best in Q2, given that those are the race tyres, there was a mix of strategies throughout practice with Ferrari opting to go straight onto the ultrasofts while Mercedes ran the soft tyres.
Halfway through the 60-minute session, and with rain in the air, Sebastian Vettel led the way with a 1:33.689 with Valtteri Bottas second. Raikkonen was third, a full second down, while Hamilton – despite struggling at Turns 2, 9, 10 and 14 – was fourth.
Daniel Ricciardo’s practice ended with 25 minutes on the clock as the Renault engine in his RB14 let go in a plume of smoke. That could be his day over as Red Bull have just over two hours to change the engine before qualifying begins at 2pm local time.
Heading out for a second run on the ultrasoft tyres, Raikkonen edged Vettel for the top spot with a 1:33.469 but the championship leader came back with a 1:33.018. That put him 0.451s up on his team-mate.
Mercedes made the swap to the ultras. But Bottas could not improve on his third place, although he did close the gap to 0.7s. While Hamilton finished fifth.
The team-mates were separated by Max Verstappen. Hamilton was followed by Kevin Magnussen and the Force India pairing of Sergio Perez and Esteban Ocon. While Carlos Sainz and Sergey Sirotkin completed the top ten.
INITIAL CLASSIFICATION (END OF FP3)
The Prancing Horses lead the way in final practice#F1 #ChineseGP ?? pic.twitter.com/2cIiSqTApb
— Formula 1 (@F1) April 14, 2018
