Charles Leclerc has the upper hand heading into qualifying, as Ferrari completed a hattrick of 1-2’s in Bahrain Grand Prix practice.
In a subdued session because of the unrepresentative conditions, the Scuderia remained the only team to seemingly turn up their engines as the Monegasque posted a 1m29.569s on the soft C3 tyres.
That put him a 0.169s ahead of teammate Sebastian Vettel as the pendulum swings back and forth between the pair.
Mercedes were 0.8s back as Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas only completed a single low-fuel run in the final minutes to sit third and fourth respectively.
Expectations are though, that when it matters come qualifying under the lights, that margin will reduce quite significantly.
Romain Grosjean was the lead drivers in the midfield in P5, but the Haas driver only has a tenth over Nico Hulkenberg and Lando Norris in sixth and seventh.
McLaren is showing strong speed down the Sakhir straights and that allowed Carlos Sainz to join his rookie teammate in the top 10 in P9.
As for Red Bull, they too are yet to show their potential with Max Verstappen only eighth and Pierre Gasly down in 12th having only completed a single run on the C3 compound.
Daniil Kvyat completed the top 10 for Toro Rosso.
Alfa Romeo looked to make up for lost track time on Friday with both Kimi Raikkonen and Antonio Giovinazzi completed a session-high 21 laps with the Finn ending P11.
An interesting battle is developing for the final positions in Q2 with Racing Point 14th and 15th just ahead of Daniel Ricciardo and Alex Albon with all four covered by less than 0.1s.
At the back, the Williams drivers were also closer with less than two-tenths between George Russell and Robert Kubica.
The pace of the FW42 continues to lag, however, with 1.3s between the F2 champion and the next car, that being Giovinazzi’s Alfa Romeo.
Full times for final practice can be seen below:
