FP3
It’s advantage Ferrari after the first and only proper free practice session at Shanghai. Points leader Sebastian Vettel topped the timings, nearly four tenths of a second faster than Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas.
With limited running on Friday, there was plenty to fit into the one hour session ahead of qualifying later today. Both Ferrari and Mercedes started the session with long runs, trying to get an idea of their race strategy for tomorrow. It was far from an ideal race simulation, which is normally done on Friday during the longer sessions of FP1 or 2, meaning there’s more uncertanty going into the race than teams would normally have.
What we saw of the longer runs, it looks like Ferrari might just hold the advantage on Sunday.
That left Red Bull as the only “front runner” running real quick times, allowing Daniel Ricciardo to take the fastest spot early in the session. As Ferrari, Mercedes, and Williams started their flying laps later in the session, Ricciardo was demoted to seventh. Team mate Max Verstappen could only manage sixth.
Ferrari retained that advantage going into the qualifying simulations though, again, these practice runs weren’t the exact science we’re used to seeing on a Friday.
Multiple
mistakes from both Mercedes drivers meant they lost time, but it’s unlikely they would have been able to close that gap to Ferrari even on a perfect lap. In the last minutes of the session, Hamilton set a purple first sector and a personal best in the second, only to run very, very wide at the hairpin, losing about half a second. His laptime improved, but he still stayed more than half a second slower than Vettel in P1.
It's worth noting that the long straight on the Shanghai circuit means we’ll really see the difference in power units come into play this weekend. Whilst the Ferrari and Mercedes look relatively evenly matched, with Ferrari possibly having the advantage, Renault are much further away, with the fastest Red Bull time more than 1.6s slower than Vettel’s fastest time. This will also significantly hurt sauber, who are running year old power units.
Honda are also a little off of the pace.
Most out of place in the session were Force India. Whilst Nico Hulkenberg managed to finish the session P11, team mate Esteban Ocon was way back in sixteenth, slower than anybody other than McLaren and Sauber.
FP3 Times:
1. Sebastian Vettel – 1:33.336
2. Kimi Raikkonen – 1:33.389
3. Valtteri Botas – 1:33.707
4. Lewis Hamilton – 1:33.879
5. Felipe Massa – 1:34.773
6. Max Verstappen – 1:34.946
7. Daniel Ricciardo – 1:35.092
8. Lance Stroll – 1:35.182
9. Jolyon Palmer – 1:35.192
10. Carlos Sainz – 1:35.223
11. Nico Hulkenberg – 1:35.449
12. Kevin Magnussen – 1:35.521
13. Sergio Perez – 1:35.626
14. Romain Grosjean – 1:35.680
15. Daniil Kvyat – 1:35.804
16. Esteban Ocon – 1:35.811
17. Fernando Alonso – 1:35.912
18. Marcus Ericsson – 1:36.063
19. Stoffel Vandoorne – 1:36.221
20. Antonio Giovinazzi – 1:36.705
