Source: Ferrari Media

F1 News

Vettel holds off Mercedes to win FP3 in Brazil

10 November 2018 at 15:00
  • Nicolás Quarles van Ufford

Sebastian Vettel has won the third and final practice session in Brazil, with the German beating both Mercedes cars to P1 with a track-record-smashing lap to put his Ferrari ahead of the pack by multiple tenths of a second.

Ferrari need to outscore Mercedes by 13 points this weekend to keep their constructors' championship-hopes alive, meaning that a pole position will be vital later today.

The fact that Vettel out-drove all other cars by two-tenths of a second is very promising indeed for the Italians, although Kimi Raikkonen was in fourth behind both of the Mercedes cars.

Lewis Hamilton finished in second place behind Vettel, and his teammate Valtteri Bottas rounded out the top three.

How it happened

The last practice session in Brazil started with a very strong lap from Vettel. A 1:08.857 from the German proved almost half a second quicker than anyone else for the first half of the hour-long session. He was eventually overtaken by both Mercedes cars and by Raikkonen when they all did their hot-lap simulations, but the Red Bulls stayed behind the German.

Then, he came back. A track-record smashing 1:07.948 beat all other cars by almost half a second, with Bottas having the second best time and Raikkonen getting third. Hamilton was in P4, but he wouldn't stand for that.

He came out with a quarter of an hour to go to hot-lap, but he couldn't get close to Vettel's lap, despite having a purple second sector. He tried multiple times but it wasn't meant to be. Mercedes have some homework to do in the hours ahead of qualifying, because they simply weren't quick enough in FP3.

In the final minutes, Haas suddenly turned some heads as well. Kevin Magnussen beat both Red Bulls with a low 1:09.1, bumping him up to P5 while Romain Grosjean was in P7, meaning Verstappen was down in P8. The Bulls boys weren't having any of that, though, so they decided to come out for one more hot lap. Verstappen moved up to P5 and Ricciardo followed suit in P6, but Haas had a one-two in the midfield battle nonetheless. Could they replicate this in qualifying?