Sebastian Vettel, Ferrari, Albert Park, 2018

Vettel leads Ferrari one-two after flying lap at end of drying session

2018 Australian Grand Prix third practice

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Ferrari headed the final practice session for the Australian Grand Prix by a huge margin after sending its drivers out on slicks for a late flying run on a damp track.

The pair were joined at the top of the times sheets by Marcus Ericsson, the only other driver to set a time on ultra-softs as track conditions improved.

The trio were almost three seconds clear of the rest of the field who did their best times on intermediate tyres. A clear lap for Vettel meant he was almost two-and-a-half seconds quicker than his team mate.

Valtteri Bottas and the Toro Rosso pair also joined the track on slicks late in the session but ran out of time to set a lap. Fernando Alonso expressed his frustration on the radio at McLaren after running out of time to do a time on slick tyres.

The second began on a very wet track but with no further rain falling the surface improved rapidly. Max Verstappen comfortably led the field by over a second in the early running on intermediate tyres.

Lance Stroll made a late start to the session as Williams worked to repair a gearbox problem on his car. The Force India drivers only did installation laps at the start of the session, then spent the rest of the hour in the pits.

Pos.No.DriverCarBest lapGapLaps
15Sebastian VettelFerrari1’26.06715
27Kimi RaikkonenFerrari1’28.4992.43213
39Marcus EricssonSauber-Ferrari1’28.8902.82314
433Max VerstappenRed Bull-TAG Heuer1’31.6805.6138
555Carlos Sainz JnrRenault1’33.1727.10511
63Daniel RicciardoRed Bull-TAG Heuer1’34.0437.97614
777Valtteri BottasMercedes1’34.1748.10714
844Lewis HamiltonMercedes1’34.2258.1587
92Stoffel VandoorneMcLaren-Renault1’34.2338.16615
1014Fernando AlonsoMcLaren-Renault1’34.2988.23113
1110Pierre GaslyToro Rosso-Honda1’34.9908.92316
1228Brendon HartleyToro Rosso-Honda1’35.4389.37116
1335Sergey SirotkinWilliams-Mercedes1’35.5899.52216
1418Lance StrollWilliams-Mercedes1’35.8289.7618
158Romain GrosjeanHaas-Ferrari1’36.17110.1046
1616Charles LeclercSauber-Ferrari1’36.44810.38112
1720Kevin MagnussenHaas-Ferrari1’36.80710.7407
1827Nico HulkenbergRenault1’38.48212.4158

Combined lap times

PosDriverCarFP1FP2FP3Fri/Sat diffTotal laps
1Lewis HamiltonMercedes1’24.0261’23.9311’34.225+10.29469
2Max VerstappenRed Bull-TAG Heuer1’24.7711’24.0581’31.680+7.62268
3Valtteri BottasMercedes1’24.5771’24.1591’34.174+10.01577
4Kimi RaikkonenFerrari1’24.8751’24.2141’28.499+4.28575
5Sebastian VettelFerrari1’24.9951’24.4511’26.067+1.61675
6Romain GrosjeanHaas-Ferrari1’25.7301’24.6481’36.171+11.52364
7Daniel RicciardoRed Bull-TAG Heuer1’25.0631’24.7211’34.043+9.32267
8Fernando AlonsoMcLaren-Renault1’25.8961’25.2001’34.298+9.09857
9Kevin MagnussenHaas-Ferrari1’27.0351’25.2461’36.807+11.56150
10Stoffel VandoorneMcLaren-Renault1’26.4821’25.2851’34.233+8.94863
11Carlos Sainz JnrRenault1’25.9221’25.3901’33.172+7.78269
12Sergio PerezForce India-Mercedes1’26.7671’25.41357
13Nico HulkenbergRenault1’26.5831’25.4631’38.482+13.01968
14Lance StrollWilliams-Mercedes1’26.6361’25.5431’35.828+10.28570
15Esteban OconForce India-Mercedes1’26.6051’25.88864
16Brendon HartleyToro Rosso-Honda1’27.7451’25.9251’35.438+9.51373
17Pierre GaslyToro Rosso-Honda1’26.4941’25.9451’34.990+9.04580
18Sergey SirotkinWilliams-Mercedes1’26.5361’25.9741’35.589+9.61578
19Marcus EricssonSauber-Ferrari1’27.9641’26.8141’28.890+2.07673
20Charles LeclercSauber-Ferrari1’28.8531’26.8151’36.448+9.63375

Third practice visual gaps

Sebastian Vettel – 1’26.067

+2.432 Kimi Raikkonen – 1’28.499

+2.823 Marcus Ericsson – 1’28.890

+5.613 Max Verstappen – 1’31.680

+7.105 Carlos Sainz Jnr – 1’33.172

+7.976 Daniel Ricciardo – 1’34.043

+8.107 Valtteri Bottas – 1’34.174

+8.158 Lewis Hamilton – 1’34.225

+8.166 Stoffel Vandoorne – 1’34.233

+8.231 Fernando Alonso – 1’34.298

+8.923 Pierre Gasly – 1’34.990

+9.371 Brendon Hartley – 1’35.438

+9.522 Sergey Sirotkin – 1’35.589

+9.761 Lance Stroll – 1’35.828

Drivers more then ten seconds off the pace omitted.

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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12 comments on “Vettel leads Ferrari one-two after flying lap at end of drying session”

  1. So it will be dry qualy?

    1. Looks like it. The sun is out here and warming up. Looks pretty clear on the horizon.
      There has just been the Porche Carrera Cup race all on slicks so they would have dried up the racing line.

      1. @theoddkiwi There’s a race before qualy? Sure it’ll dry it up. Nice info…
        Q2 would be mega. I hope Toro Rosso kids could make the most of their first race without engine penalty. I’d like to see how they start and fight in the tight middle competition.

        1. Yep at the Melbourne GP they have support races from the Australian Super Car, Porche Carrera Cup, Australian GT cup and the Asia Pacific Ferrari Challenge Trofeo which has a feild of 30 cars.
          So there us lots of racing all day all weekend.

  2. Archit (@architjain07)
    24th March 2018, 4:38

    All things being equal… Verstappen had got the measure of Ricciardo! McLaren looking reasonable to fight for best of the rest! #bebrave

  3. Well minimally you can say Ferrari look alert and ready to fight. Same goes for Alonso.

  4. Not much word on Hamilton and what issues he had in the garage. The took ages to get him out. The first time, then didnt get him out for a run at the end but looked like they were trying.

  5. My gosh this font is awful, It is making aspects of the graphics unreadable.

    And the graphics package in general seems to be lacking a lot of data & detail we had in the past, Seem rather dumbed down.

    1. Liberty should learn from NetFlix before wasting millions more of ‘brand value’.

      1. Liberty should learn from NetFlix before wasting millions more of ‘brand value’.

        Seems like Netflix’s communication of their brand doesn’t really work when people call them “NetFlix”.

        1. I just blame asian language autocorrect.

    2. Classic case of form trumping function.

      I keep reading the lowercase ‘a’ as z, due to the way it is stylized.

      Thankfully most of the race graphics are in uppercase, which is marginally better.

      Although I really wish that they keep this font only for trackside branding and print, but for information-dense screens (timing screens, timing tower) they use a compact sans-serif font like Helvetica, or a font inspired by it.

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