Sebastian Vettel led a Ferrari 1-2 in the final free practice session ahead of qualifying for the Singapore Grand Prix.
The Italian squad dominated FP3, with Vettel finishing more than half a second quicker than the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton in third.
Both Ferraris hit the track with the hypersoft tyres early in the session, putting in a handful of banker laps before returning to the pits.
As the session wore on and the track evolved, Mercedes were able to get within two seconds of Vettel’s hypersoft time while running the soft compound of tyres – the hardest available for the Singapore weekend. But any hope of a close qualifying was wiped out when Vettel returned to the track late in the session, lowering the benchmark to 1m38.054s.
Kimi Raikkonen could only get within 0.416s of his team-mate, finishing second ahead of Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas.
The Mercedes enjoyed strong pace in the second and final sector, but lost a considerable amount of time in the short first sector.
The Red Bull duo finished fifth and sixth, with Daniel Ricciardo ahead of team-mate Max Verstappen. Verstappen spent the majority of the session frustrated with his engine, which team boss Christian Horner said had a “mind of its own”. Verstappen complained about the engine braking and later told the team “the product in the back of this car isn’t working like I want it”. He was 1.2s off Vettel’s pace, with Ricciardo only a tenth of a second quicker.
Romain Grosjean took best of the rest in P7, ahead of Esteban Ocon, Sergio Perez, and Fernando Alonso.
Nico Hulkenberg was the quickest of the works Renault drivers, a 1m40.450s lap putting him P11, ahead of Kevin Magnussen, Carlos Sainz, and Pierre Gasly.
Stoffel Vandoorne, Charles Leclerc, and Brendon Hartley finished 15th through to 17th.
Sergey Sirotkin took P18 after a near miss with the wall late in the session, beating Marcus Ericsson and Lance Stroll.
