Melbourne FP3: Vettel heads Ferrari 1-2

Vettel lapped the damp Albert Park circuit in 1:26.067 seconds on slick tyres, more than two seconds ahead of second-fastest team mate Kimi Raikkonen.

Mercedes’ champion Lewis Hamilton, who topped the timesheets in both of Friday’s practice sessions in warm and dry conditions, was confined to the garage for half the session with an apparent steering wheel problem.

The Briton finally emerged to post the eighth fastest lap on intermediate tyres behind seventh-placed team mate Valtteri Bottas.

Sauber’s Marcus Ericsson was third quickest ahead of Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, both of whom were on slicks, but the times will likely have little bearing on qualifying.

The session began in difficult conditions following early thunderstorms and the opening part of the hour-long session was conducted on full wet Pirelli tyres, gingerly testing the conditions.

Renault’s Nico Hulkenberg was the first to put a time on the board as the switch intermediate tyres began. He made steady improvements but his time at the top of the order was brief, with Verstappen jumping to P1 with his first lap on inters, a lap that included a nervous moment midway through the lap as the back of his star stepped out and he almost collided with the wall.

Ricciardo, who was overnight handed a three-place grid penalty for an FP3 infraction, then made it a Red Bull one-two and thereafter the times began to drop as the conditions improved.

The result was that behind Verstappen on the end-of-session timesheet, Carlos Sainz took fourth place with a late run that yielded a best time of 1:33.172, while Ricciardo dropped back to sixth place.

Bottas was seventh for Mercedes with a time of 1:34.174. That was just five-hundredths of a second clear of team-mate Hamilton who had a worrying moment when he encountered technical problems that prevented him from pulling away. A change of steering wheel righted the problem, however.

Ninth place went to Stoffel Vandoorne, with McLaren team-mate Fernando Alonso tenth, some eight seconds off the pace of Vettel.