George Russell was fastest in third practice for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, the Mercedes set a 23.334 on the soft tyre to edge out championship leader Lando Norris by four thousandths. Norris, however, looked to have a tenth advantage over his championship rival Max Verstappen while his teammate Oscar Piastri was fifth.<\/p>\n
Russell found a small advantage in the closing moments of the session to edge himself ahead of the McLaren. Russell, meanwhile, has looked on the pace of the three championship contenders, but the big question ahead of qualifying this evening is how much McLaren has in hand<\/p>\n
Norris goes into qualifying and the final race as the favourite to win the championship and on Friday, topped both practices ahead of Verstappen.<\/p>\n
Norris leads Verstappen by twelve points going into the final race of the season, and the Briton will win the title if he finishes on the podium on Sunday, regardless of anyone else\u2019s result. If Verstappen wins the race, Norris must finish at least third in the grand prix.<\/p>\n
The third title contender, McLaren\u2019s Oscar Piastri, is sixteen points behind Norris and faces a difficult route to the title. Piastri was a quarter of a second behind his teammate.<\/p>\n
Norris nearly collided with Yuki Tsunoda early in final practice when the Red Bull driver was going slowly in the middle of the track towards Turn Eleven. It forced Norris to take avoiding action and run wide in what could have been a costly shunt before qualifying.<\/p>\n
Fernando Alonso put his Aston Martin fourth, but has been summoned to the stewards after failing to attend fan engagement and fined \u20ac20,000 along with teammate Lance Stroll. The Spaniard was a tenth and a quarter behind the Dutchman as he went a hundredth ahead of Oscar Piastri.<\/p>\n
Haas continued another strong weekend Esteban Ocon going sixth as he went four thousandths ahead of his teammate Ollie Bearman. The team look to be a serious contender for Q3, in what could once again be a hugely competitive qualifying with the top ten covered by just under four tenths.<\/p>\n
Bearman was six and a half hundredths ahead of the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc, who was three hundredths faster than Kimi Antonelli. Leclerc\u2019s teammate Lewis Hamilton caused the only red flag, which left the seven-time champion eighteenth.<\/p>\n
Hamilton, spun off and hit the front of the wall and lost the rear after bottoming out in Turn Nine. That resulted in the front suspension buckling under the car as he ran to the barriers. He was nearly followed by his former teammate Russell, who had a spin<\/p>\n
Alex Albon completed the top ten, he was a hundred and a half behind Antonelli and ahead of Gabriel Bortoletto by seven hundredths. The Sauber driver split the Williams going two hundredths faster than Nico Hulkenberg, who was a quarter of a tenth ahead of Lance Stroll.<\/p>\n
The cut-off for Q3 would have been 23.733, but as things cool for qualifying times based on FP1-FP2 were around half a second faster, both sessions were or will be an hour later than Friday. With temperatures dropping further under the night sky.<\/p>\n
The two Racing Bulls were fifteenth and sixteenth, Liam Lawson three hundredths ahead of teammate Isack Hadjar. Pierre Gasly was four tenths ahead of Hamilton, the Ferrari split the Alpine\u2019s going half a tenth ahead of Franco Colapinto while Yuki Tsunoda completed the field.<\/p>\n
George Russell was fastest in third practice for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, the Mercedes set a 23.334 on the soft tyre to edge out championship leader Lando Norris by four thousandths. Norris, however, looked to have a tenth advantage over his championship rival Max Verstappen while his teammate Oscar Piastri was fifth. Russell found<\/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":[2250,63,64,65,709,768,814,1131,1287,1290,1298,1571,2202,1637,1638,1642,2064,2077,2174,2175],"class_list":["post-15382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-session-reports","tag-2250","tag-abu-dhabi","tag-abu-dhabi-gp","tag-abu-dhabi-grand-prix","tag-ferrari","tag-fp3","tag-george-russell","tag-lando-norris","tag-mclaren","tag-mclaren-mercedes","tag-mercedes","tag-practice-report","tag-practice-three","tag-red-bull","tag-red-bull-honda","tag-red-bull-racing","tag-uae","tag-united-arab-emirates","tag-yas-marina","tag-yas-marina-circuit"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15382"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15384,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15382\/revisions\/15384"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}