Melbourne FP3: Hamilton still on top but Ferrari emerge

Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg ended the final free practice session of the Australian Grand Prix weekend at the top of the timing screens, but behind them a posse of Ferrari powered cars were chasing gamely.

Hamilton's best time of 1:25.624 was a tad over a tenth up on teammate Rosberg, who was back at the sharp end after a troublesome first day in Melbourne.

Next up was Sebastian Vettel, best of a quartet of Ferrari powered cars, with Carlos Sainz fourth quickest and ahead of Kimi Raikkonen who was followed by Max Verstappen in sixth - thus setting the stage for an intriguing qualifying session later in the afternoon.

After both of Friday's practice sessions were plagued by rain showers, all 22 cars made it out onto a dry track on a sunny day to post laps but the more favourable conditions failed to prevent mishaps.

In the early phase of the session, Red Bull Racing’s Daniel Ricciardo and Daniil Kvyat traded fastest laps on the supersoft tyre to control the top slots on the timesheet, but with half an hour gone Rosberg dimissed the pair, running six tenths quicker than Ricciardo on the soft tyre to claim P1 with a lap of 1:26.149.

Hamilton was close behind his team-mate on track but he failed to make the most of the yellow-banded tyre and he slotted into P2, three tenths of a second adrift of the German.

With Ferrari also running softs at this point and looking more considerably more sluggish than Mercedes things were looking ominous, but when the field began to wholly switch to the red-banded supersoft tyre in the closing stages of the session the gap began to shrink significantly.

Vettel vaulted into P1 on the supersoft, bypassing Rosberg by almost three tenths of a second. Kimi Räikkönen then moved into P3, six tenths adrift of team-mate Vettel.

That was the cue for the Mercedes pair to bolt on supersofts and while the gap between the Brackley outfit and the Maranello team had been significant on soft tyres, this time it was a much closer battle.

Hamilton powered through to P1 with a lap of 1:25.624. Rosberg followed on track but he couldn’t quite find the pace to challenge his team-mate and finished 0.176s behind the champion. The margin to Ferrari though was just 0.228, with the gap in part being caused by a small mistake on Vettel’s quick lap.

A less than perfect lap for Räikkönen meant that he ended the session in P5, with Carlos Sainz, in the Ferrari-powered Toro Rosso, stealing P4 in the final minutes of the session. Sainz was 0.6s slower than Hamilton and the Spaniard’s time suggest that both he and sixth-fastest team-mate Max Verstappen can challenge for Q3 berths.

Williams’ Valtteri Bottas was seventh ahead of Ricciardo, while Felipe Massa was ninth in the other Williams. Sergio Perez, was tenth for Force India.

Conditions on track were tricky at the start of the session and there were several spins with Perez and McLaren’s Fernando Alonso both going off track and recovering at the penultimate corner.

The biggest incident, however, occurred in the pit lane. At the start of the session Haas’ Romain Grosjean and Manor’s Rio Haryanto were released from their garages at the same time. Haryanto was slow away, however, as the pair collided in the pit lane.

Grosjean spent the next half hour in the garage having a new floor and front wing fitted to his car, while Haryanto had a new front fitted. Grosjean ended up completing just 11 laps in the session for P19, while Haryanto posted 23 laps and finished in P22.