Australian GP: Hamilton beats Vettel to top FP3

After topping Friday practice and enjoying a huge advantage over the next-fastest team, Hamilton continued his good form into FP3 on Saturday afternoon.

He hit the head of the times as soon as he pumped in a first flying lap and regained the advantage on the two occasions he was briefly bumped back.

The first came seconds after Valtteri Bottas had completed a second flying lap, and the next came when Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel used new soft tyres to go quickest.

Hamilton’s second run on new softs yielded a 1m22.292s, enough to beat Vettel by 0.264s.

Charles Leclerc completed Ferrari’s rise from the foot of the top 10 to go third-fastest, 0.457s, but Mercedes appears to have its rival from Maranello at arm’s length heading into qualifying.

The only blip for Mercedes was Bottas’s failure to set a true time on his second set of new tyres.

He ran wide exiting the penultimate corner and got sideways after touching the grass, which limited him to a 1m23.422s – only good enough for seventh.

That, combined with a surprisingly muted session from Red Bull, allowed Haas duo Romain Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen take fourth and fifth in the times.

Grosjean was 0.820s slower than Mercedes, two tenths clear of Magnussen, who in turn was a few hundredths clear of Pierre Gasly in the lead Red Bull.

Daniil Kvyat set the eighth-fastest time in the Toro Rosso, indicating the Honda engine was not the reason Red Bull were towards the foot of the top 10 as Max Verstappen ended the session ninth.

Daniel Ricciardo completed the top 10, less than half a tenth clear of his Renault teammate Nico Hulkenberg.

At the tail of the field, Williams remains detached from the midfield battle.

George Russell was the team’s quickest driver again, outpacing Robert Kubica by six tenths but lapping 3.6s off the pace and 1.4s behind McLaren’s Lando Norris in 18th.

Kubica slapped the pitwall when he ran wide entering the pitlane, scattering a small amount of debris.

He was also involved in a pitlane incident with Norris that saw McLaren fined €5000 for an unsafe release.

Session results

Cla	#	Driver	Chassis	Engine	Laps	Time	Gap
1	44	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	Mercedes	12	1'22.292
2	5	Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	Ferrari	12	1'22.556	0.264
3	16	Charles Leclerc	Ferrari	Ferrari	12	1'22.749	0.457
4	8	Romain Grosjean	Haas	Ferrari	17	1'23.112	0.820
5	20	Kevin Magnussen	Haas	Ferrari	15	1'23.334	1.042
6	10	Pierre Gasly	Red Bull	Honda	17	1'23.367	1.075
7	77	Valtteri Bottas	Mercedes	Mercedes	17	1'23.422	1.130
8	26	Daniil Kvyat	Toro Rosso	Honda	16	1'23.442	1.150
9	33	Max Verstappen	Red Bull	Honda	19	1'23.481	1.189
10	3	Daniel Ricciardo	Renault	Renault	14	1'23.695	1.403
11	27	Nico Hulkenberg	Renault	Renault	15	1'23.737	1.445
12	99	Antonio Giovinazzi	Alfa Romeo	Ferrari	16	1'23.831	1.539
13	55	Carlos Sainz Jr.	McLaren	Renault	21	1'24.049	1.757
14	11	Sergio Perez	Racing Point	Mercedes	18	1'24.082	1.790
15	23	Alex Albon	Toro Rosso	Honda	15	1'24.328	2.036
16	18	Lance Stroll	Racing Point	Mercedes	16	1'24.345	2.053
17	7	Kimi Raikkonen	Alfa Romeo	Ferrari	18	1'24.402	2.110
18	4	Lando Norris	McLaren	Renault	16	1'24.568	2.276
19	63	George Russell	Williams	Mercedes	14	1'25.944	3.652
20	88	Robert Kubica	Williams	Mercedes	16	1'26.589	4.297