Rosberg tops Ricciardo in wet-dry 3rd practice at Suzuka

Suzuka practice

Saturday morning's final practice at Suzuka began in damp and dreary conditions, but it ended in the same way as Friday's sessions had: with championship leader Nico Rosberg topping the timesheet.

Overnight rain made for damp conditions prior to the 60-minute session, with drivers beginning their installation laps on the Pirelli Cinturato Green intermediate tire. The asphalt quickly began to dry, making the wet-weather tires obsolete

Rosberg's best lap of 1m 32.092s on the yellow-marked rubber was the fastest of the weekend thus far, but the fact that Daniel Ricciardo was within three tenths of a second with 1m 32.394s bears out Red Bull's belief that they can be very competitive here on a track that favors excellent handling as much as horsepower.

Sebastian Vettel was again Ferrari's faster runner with 1m 32.731s, but the German was disappointed that the team had lost ground to Mercedes since FP2. Max Verstappen was also unhappy in fourth, struggling to 1m 32.784s in a car that he said didn't handle the way he wanted it to.

Kimi Raikkonen hit traffic on his best lap and ended up fifth, 0.9s back from Rosberg's marker, with Felipe Massa taking sixth for Williams ahead of the second Silver Arrow of Lewis Hamilton, who spoiled his best effort with a mistake at Degner.

There were big smiles at Renault, where Jolyon Palmer had his best run of the season together with team mate Kevin Magnussen; they were eighth and ninth with exactly the same lap time: 1m 33.639s.

Rounding out the top 10 was Nico Hulkenberg on 1m 33.646s for Force India.

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