What went on in F1’s final practice of 2021 at Abu Dhabi GP

Lewis Hamilton led title rival Max Verstappen in F1’s final practice session of its 2021 campaign in Abu Dhabi.

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Key moments:

> Hamilton two tenths clear despite massive lock-up

> Bottas and Perez close for third and fourth

> Norris best of the rest

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The Mercedes duo were among just a handful of drivers to use softs in the first half of Saturday morning practice, and improved their laptimes gradually at the head of the timing screens, with Hamilton eventually settling on a 1m23.274s that left him three quarters of a second clear of Valtteri Bottas.

The Red Bull pair both ended up a second and a half adrift at that point, Sergio Perez ahead of Verstappen, but with both having run on mediums and Verstappen electing to seemingly focus on long-running after a couple of initial push laps.

After a switch to soft tyres and an apparent rear wing change, Verstappen bailed out of his first flying lap after locking the left front into Turn 6 and badly overcooking the entry, but then put an effort together to climb to second, two tenths off Hamilton.

He then looked in with a chance to improve with his next push lap, but had a big twitch coming into Turn 9 and stopped pushing then and there, subsequently coming into the pits.

Max has a moment at the newly configured Turn 9

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Hamilton, for his part, had cost himself a chance to improve with a fresh set of softs with a massive Turn 12 lock-up on what was looking like his best lap. He would soon implore the team to swap him to the previous set, and used it to see out the session.

Team-mate Bottas was likewise unable to improve on a new set of softs yet narrowly held on to third over Perez, who did improve late on.

After a typically quiet Friday, McLaren was best of the rest with Lando Norris in fifth, followed by the two AlphaTauris of rookie Yuki Tsunoda and Pierre Gasly.

Ferrari’s efforts were led by Carlos Sainz in eighth, albeit with the caveat of the Italian team electing not to use the softs at all throughout the session.

Friday standout Alpine, mirroring Ferrari in not using softs, was headed by Esteban Ocon in 12th.

Apart from the lock-ups, the session was largely incident-free, with only Nicholas Latifi reporting a loose dash on his Williams and Hamilton – a single reprimand away from a potentially ruinous 10-place grid penalty – briefly baulking Nikita Mazepin of note.

Practice 3 Results