Sebastian Vettel set the quickest time in third practice but a crash by Sergey Sirotkin disrupted the final minutes of running before today’s qualifying session.

The Ferrari driver’s best effort of 1’43.091 did not improve on the quickest time set by his team mate Kimi Raikkonen yesterday. Most drivers did not lower their times despite almost all of them using the ultra-soft tyres for much of the session.

Lewis Hamilton chipped away at his time to end up second fastest, within four-tenths of a second of the Ferrari. Behind him were three drivers covered by little more than a tenth of a second: Raikkonen, Max Verstappen (enjoying his smoothest session of the weekend so far) and Valtteri Bottas.

Friday pace-setter Daniel Ricciardo was only 12th fastest. All four Mercedes-powered drivers feature in the top 10 despite Sirotkin’s crash, which occurred at the exit of turn three with just under 10 minutes left to run in the session.

Kevin Magnussen continued to demonstrate the potential of the Haas with seventh-fastest time. But team mate Romain Grosjean was still unhappy with the balance of his car, spinning twice and reporting various balance complaints on the radio.

The Renault drivers languished towards the bottom of the times having spent much of the session on the harder super-soft tyres. Brendon Hartley propped up the times sheets having locked up at one point while avoiding Vettel’s Ferrari.

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Third practice visual gaps

Drivers more then ten seconds off the pace omitted.

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Complete practice times

Pos	Driver	Car	FP1	FP2	FP3	Fri/Sat diff	Total laps
1	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull-TAG Heuer	1’44.277	1’42.795	1’44.861	+2.066	76
2	Kimi Raikkonen	Ferrari	1’46.861	1’42.864	1’43.493	+0.629	60
3	Max Verstappen	Red Bull-TAG Heuer	1’45.559	1’42.911	1’43.519	+0.608	55
4	Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	1’46.513	1’44.127	1’43.091	-1.036	73
5	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1’45.200	1’43.603	1’43.452	-0.151	71
6	Valtteri Bottas	Mercedes	1’44.242	1’43.570	1’43.569	-0.001	71
7	Fernando Alonso	McLaren-Renault	1’46.465	1’43.700	1’44.763	+1.063	71
8	Esteban Ocon	Force India-Mercedes	1’45.237	1’43.814	1’44.220	+0.406	70
9	Carlos Sainz Jnr	Renault	1’48.741	1’43.834	1’45.432	+1.598	62
10	Sergio Perez	Force India-Mercedes	1’45.075	1’44.142	1’43.936	-0.206	66
11	Kevin Magnussen	Haas-Ferrari	1’47.434	1’43.977	1’43.958	-0.019	58
12	Nico Hulkenberg	Renault	1’46.749	1’44.091	1’45.456	+1.365	55
13	Lance Stroll	Williams-Mercedes	1’46.590	1’44.459	1’44.123	-0.336	65
14	Romain Grosjean	Haas-Ferrari	1’46.856	1’44.425	1’45.261	+0.836	62
15	Sergey Sirotkin	Williams-Mercedes	1’46.480	1’45.007	1’44.534	-0.473	70
16	Pierre Gasly	Toro Rosso-Honda	1’46.492	1’44.712	1’44.905	+0.193	73
17	Charles Leclerc	Sauber-Ferrari	1’46.875	1’44.940	1’45.218	+0.278	66
18	Brendon Hartley	Toro Rosso-Honda	1’46.747	1’45.051	1’46.186	+1.135	79
19	Stoffel Vandoorne	McLaren-Renault	1’47.967	1’45.288	1’45.505	+0.217	63
20	Marcus Ericsson	Sauber-Ferrari	1’47.073	1’46.042	1’45.910	-0.132	47

2018 Azerbaijan Grand Prix

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