But top three teams separated by less than two tenths in final Practice One session of the season
Monday 27 November 2017 13:37, UK
Sebastian Vettel topped the timesheets in the final Practice One of the season at the Abu Dhabi GP but was run close by world champion Lewis Hamilton and Red Bull's Max Verstappen.
Vettel, a three-time winner at Abu Dhabi, set the pace with a lap of 1:39.006 at the Yas Marina Circuit to edge out Hamilton by 0.120 seconds.
Although Vettel's benchmark was set long after Hamilton's and Verstappen's personal best, the session boded well for a competitive weekend with the lead drivers of F1's three established frontrunning teams separated by less than two tenths of a second.
Red Bull will have been particularly encouraged by the close proximity of Verstappen to Hamilton with the pair just 0.028 seconds apart.
While still saddled with a significant engine deficit to their frontrunning rivals, Red Bull won in Malaysia and Mexico last month and are confident that there are sufficient slow-speed corners at the desert circuit to bring them into contention on race day.
However, having set the early pace when he surged over half a second clear of team-mate Valtteri Bottas, Hamilton failed to improve on his final runs after an extended period in the pits.
Britain's George Russell was 11th in his second Practice One outing with Force India.
With the world championships wrapped up and the session's early-afternoon start-time making conditions unrepresentative of Sunday's twilight grand prix, the teams took the opportunity to evaluate new parts with 2018 in mind.
Ferrari's experiment was the most eye-catching as Kimi Raikkonen ran a 'Red Bull-style' diffuser on his Ferrari.
"The talk of the pitlane is that it's a departure from Ferrari and going towards more the Red Bull style of diffuser in terms of the strakes they've got and the concept and the little bit in the middle," reported Sky F1's Ted Kravitz.
McLaren's Fernando Alonso didn't complete a timed lap during the opening hour, confining his activities to set-up changes and practice starts, before a late burst propelled the Spaniard to seventh in the charts, a position ahead of team-mate Stoffel Vandoorne.
Both McLarens were 1.5 seconds off Vettel's pace. Eight months ago in the first Practice One outing of the season, the fastest McLaren was nearly three seconds shy of the summit.
Brendon Hartley, meanwhile, is facing another grid penalty after the introduction of a ninth MGU-H of the season on his car. Grid demotions have become a permanent feature in the New Zealander's F1 career so far with each of his four F1 outings besmirched by an engine-related demotion.
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