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Antonelli tops times in final practice at Bahrain GP / Photo: © AFP
Antonelli tops times in final practice at Bahrain GP
World championship leader Kimi Antonelli topped the times for Mercedes ahead of both Red Bulls in Saturday's third and final free practice ahead of the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia.
The 20-year-old Italian produced a late fastest lap of 1min 36.302sec to outpace four-time champion Max Verstappen by 0.278 seconds with Isack Hadjar third, adrift by half a second.
His Mercedes team-mate George Russell was fourth, six-tenths off the pace, ahead of the Ferraris of Charles Leclerc and seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton.
World champion Lando Norris was seventh ahead of McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri.
Franco Colapinto, who faces a 15-place grid penalty for Sunday's race after crashing in Baku last week and taking a new engine, was ninth for Alpine ahead of Racing Bulls' rookie Arvid Lindblad.
Verstappen once again showed his prowess with a brief appearance on softs in an uneventful session run in hot and humid conditions, but the action was mainly concerned with tyre evaluation and preservation.
It began in leisurely fashion with only two cars venturing out in the heat, with the serious stuff only starting when Leclerc and Norris joined in after 15 minutes.
The first meaningful times did not come until Norris topped Leclerc and Gasly in 1:37.161, as most teams looked to save their tyres for qualifying later Saturday.
With 25 minutes run, both Mercedes, both Red Bulls, Antonelli and Hamilton remained in the pits, while Norris and Piastri, on mediums, topped the time-screens ahead of Leclerc, on hards, with the rest all on softs.
The action paused mid-session for three minutes when a red flag as Oliver Bearman's Haas shed some brake shrouding at Turn 10.
The big guns then joined the fray, with Antonelli going top in 1:36.924 ahead of Russell.
Hamilton, still struggling with a faulty mirror, was then impeded on his first push run on softs. Ferrari had been fined 10,000 euros ($11,260) on Friday when his mirror partly caused an impeding incident.
It was a mostly unspectacular session until the final minutes, as the drivers lapped with care to keep tyres cool and fresh before their flying laps -- and needing to retain multiple sets of softs in particular.
A.Smith--SFF
