Oscar Piastri was fastest in third practice for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, the McLaren driver set a 23.428 on the soft tyre going just under two-tenths faster than teammate Lando Norris. McLaren has looked strong all weekend as they look to secure their first constructors in a quarter of a century with their nearest rival Carlos Sainz fifth.<\/p>\n
Both McLarens set their fastest times using the soft tyres,\u00a0 however neither improved on their final attempts. Piastri couldn\u2019t improve despite doing personal best in the middle sector but Norris didn\u2019t improve either.<\/p>\n
Lewis Hamilton put his Mercedes third but was two-tenths behind Norris, but Mercedes look to be in the mix going into the seven-time champions final race for the Silver Arrows before joining Ferrari next season. Max Verstappen was fourth just over two hundredths behind Hamilton and a hundredth and a half ahead of Carlos Sainz, with George Russell sixth.<\/p>\n
But Hamilton\u2019s fastest time was a good effort considering that he was on used soft tyres which suggests there is more to find. McLaren appears to be finding most of their time in the twister harbour section which makes up the final sector, but Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull are not far off across the remainder of the lap.<\/p>\n
There was a little bit of concern for Sainz following a smoky engine, an engine issue would certainly hand McLaren the constructors, with \u00a0Charles Leclerc\u2019s change of PU.<\/p>\n
Qualifying will be held in cooler conditions after the sun sets, so the teams decided to leave it until the final ten minutes of practice to show their hand as the temperature dropped during the session. The teams know that the cooler it gets the faster the lap times will be.<\/p>\n
Haas continued their strong weekend Nico Hulkenberg going seventh a hundredth and a half behind Russell and just a thousandth ahead of teammate Kevin Magnussen. The Dane lead most of the session until the big teams did their qualifying simulations in the closing twenty minutes.<\/p>\n
Haas are five points behind Alpine in the battle for sixth in the Constructors’ Championship.<\/p>\n
The second Ferrari of Leclerc was ninth half a hundredth behind the Haas, but with the ten-place grid penalty could have set his car up for the race. Leclerc was almost two tenths faster than the under-pressure Sergio Perez, the Mexican completing the top ten.<\/p>\n
Yuki Tsunoda ended the session in eleventh for RB, ahead of Albon by three hundredths and the Alpine pair of Pierre Gasly and Jack Doohan. Fernando Alonso claimed fifteenth, putting him ahead of Valtteri Bottas by a quarter of a tenth.<\/p>\n
Liam Lawson was seventeenth ahead of Lance Stroll by a hundredth, Guanyu Zhou was almost a tenth ahead of Franco Colapinto, completing the final practice session of the season.<\/p>\n
Oscar Piastri was fastest in third practice for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, the McLaren driver set a 23.428 on the soft tyre going just under two-tenths faster than teammate Lando Norris. McLaren has looked strong all weekend as they look to secure their first constructors in a quarter of a century with their nearest<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":11841,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[2234,63,64,65,768,1131,1287,1290,1298,1475,1569,2202,1843,2064,2077,2175],"class_list":["post-14196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-race-reports","tag-2234","tag-abu-dhabi","tag-abu-dhabi-gp","tag-abu-dhabi-grand-prix","tag-fp3","tag-lando-norris","tag-mclaren","tag-mclaren-mercedes","tag-mercedes","tag-oscar-piastri","tag-practice","tag-practice-three","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-uae","tag-united-arab-emirates","tag-yas-marina-circuit"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14196"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14197,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14196\/revisions\/14197"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}