George Russell topped final practice at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on a troubled afternoon for reigning champion Max Verstappen.
Russell, who also topped the daytime FP1 session, had a relatively quiet final hour of practice, completing just 11 laps with two sets of soft tires on his way to the headline time of 1m 24.418s.
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Top spot was closely contested by McLaren’s Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, who were 0.095s and 0.392s off the pace respectively, the two papaya teammates having completely a similarly spartan run plan ahead of qualifying.
Their way was eased by Verstappen’s absence from the top of the order after a frustrating final hour of free track running for the Red Bull driver.
Verstappen made four setup changes through the session but appeared satisfied by none of them. His session started with complaints about rear sliding and ended with concern about the car bottoming out and jumping, a similar problem to that he reported on Friday night. His difficulties left him down in sixth and 0.735s off the pace.
Alex Albon and Charles Leclerc slotted between the champion and the leading trio. Albon’s Williams was particularly strong in the first two sectors, where it was the fastest car of the session, but he shipping almost 0.7s to leader Russell in the slow final split, leaving him cumulatively half a second off.
Leclerc sounded surprised not to be higher than fifth and closer than 0.681s to Russell, having topped the truncated FP2 session, which was run in representative evening conditions.
Both Leclerc and teammate Carlos Sainz, who ended the session last in his rebuilt car following an overnight crash, spent almost the entire session with the medium tire, the only drivers in the field to do so.
Both Ferrari drivers completed 13 laps apiece on the yellow-marked tire to make up for lost race-simulation time in FP2 before two runs on a set of softs in time attack.
Esteban Ocon finished seventh behind Verstappen but ahead of Logan Sargeant, who made it two Williams cars in the top 10, Yuki Tsunoda and Zhou Guanyu.
Sergio Perez was 11th and 0.841s off the pace, though he set his fastest lap earlier in the session, while Lewis Hamilton was 12th and 0.885s behind his session-topping teammate.
Pierre Gasly led Aston Martin teammates Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll, who each set a lap on both their sets of hard tires to prepare them for Sunday, when they’re expected to be the key race compound.
Valtteri Bottas led Nico Hulkenberg, Daniel Ricciardo, Kevin Magnussen and Sainz at the bottom of the order.
