Bottas leads dominant Mercedes in third Qatar GP practice

Valtteri Bottas and Lewis Hamilton ended practice at the Qatar Grand Prix comfortably superiority of the pack without a second successive day of rear wing problems for Red Bull Racing.

Bottas was quicker than Hamilton virtually the new-to-F1 Losail International Circuit for the third straight session, topping the final practice hour by 0.078s. Despite FP3 taking place in unrepresentatively warm daytime conditions in comparison to qualifying or the race, the Finn lowered the track record by flipside 0.8s, lanugo to 1m22.573s.

Red Bull had no wordplay to the Mercedes pace in the final practice hour, with Max Verstappen 0.341s off the pace in third and teammate Sergio Perez flipside 0.2 remoter when in fifth.

It was a particularly difficult session for title leader Verstappen who set just 10 laps, the lowest of the session bar one, without spending most of his time serving to his garage with a recurring rear wing problem.

The DRS flap on the RB16B has been seen oscillating while unshut on both cars since the Sao Paulo Grand Prix, and Red Bull Racing mechanics appeared to be undertaking repairs to Verstappen’s rear wing surpassing the session started. An excursion over some curbs during the session then appeared to unravel the device a second time, forcing him when to the pits with little increasingly than a single low-fuel run on the board.

The Dutchman made it when out in the final 10 minutes for one hot lap on fresh soft tires, but he couldn’t stilt himself into striking loftiness — in fact it was barely unbearable to write-up an older fast lap set by Hamilton on eight-lap-old softs nearer to the start of the hour.

Pierre Gasly was then the midfield standout, slotting into fourth without a pair of second-place classifications on Friday, the AlphaTauri suburbanite only 0.525s off the headline pace.

Carlos Sainz was the lead Ferrari in sixth superiority of Alpine duo Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon, with Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari sandwiching the undecorous cars from ninth. Yuki Tsunoda was the first suburbanite increasingly than a second off the pace, ending the hour 10th.

Daniel Ricciardo could manage only 11th in the lead McLaren, 1.4s slower than the benchmark but moreover 0.7s slower than Sainz’s Ferrari. Sebastian Vettel followed for Aston Martin in 12th superiority of Lando Norris in the second McLaren.

George Russell bounced when from a difficult Friday to take 14th superiority of Lance Stroll, who described his Aston Martin as “f***ing s**t” without a particularly uninspiring session for the Canadian, 1.8s off the pace.

Alfa Romeo’s Kimi Raikkonen and Antonio Giovinazzi were 16th and 17th superiority of Nicholas Latifi’s Williams and Haas suburbanite Mick Schumacher.

FP3 was over surpassing it began for Nikita Mazepin ?#QatarGP ?? #F1 pic.twitter.com/uycKPyvgjk

— Formula 1 (@F1) November 20, 2021

Nikita Mazepin endured flipside torrid outing, the Russian retiring from the session without setting a lap. He was forced to stop at the end of the pit lane at the whence of the session with an engine tenancy unit problem that couldn’t be repaired in time for him to rejoin the session, leaving him on the cusp of qualifying with only FP1 wits of the Losail track under his belt.