Barcelona, FP3: Ferrari take over at the top in final practice in Spain

After a Friday dominated by Mercedes, Ferrari fought back in final practice with Kimi Räikkönen heading a one-two for the Scuderia ahead of team-mate Sebastian Vettel.

After leading the way during the medium-tyre shod opening half of the session with a time of 1:22.409, Raikkonen bolted on soft tyres shortly after the halfway point in the one-hour final practice session and immediately lowered the benchmark by more than two seconds, logging a best time of 1:21.214 that stood until the end of the session.

He was quickly joined at the front of the order by Vettel who ended the session just 0.242s behind his team-mate. The four-time champion’s soft tyres effort was to be his last of the session, however. As he left the garage with 10 minutes remaining he stopped in the pit lane as the team has “noticed an anomaly with the telemetry”. The decision was taken to call him back to the garage and the team set about changing power unit elements “as a precaution” in the run-up to qualifying.

Lewis Hamilton, who had finished on top in both of Friday’s sessions, had to settle for third place ahead of Mercedes team-mate Valtteri Bottas.

Russian Grand Prix winner Bottas had a disrupted session, however. The Finn spent the bulk of the session in the garage as his crew worked to prep his car following an engine change due to a water leak and he only joined the action with nine minutes left in the session. He immediately went out on a set of soft tyres and set a best time of 1:20.868.

Bottas was followed by the Red Bull pairing of Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo, with the Dutchman edging his Australian team-mate by two tenths of a second.

Nico Hulkenberg was seventh for Renault, ahead of Felipe Massa’s Williams and local favourites Carlos Sainz of Toro Rosso and Fernando Alonso of McLaren rounded the top 10, the latter recovering from a difficult Friday in which he again suffered power unit problems.