Max Verstappen set the fastest time of the free practice session before qualifying, although not many conclusions can be drawn from it. Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel completed the top 3.
This session was not very relevant for teams and drivers, since there was still sunlight on track, while the qualifying session will happen under the Bahrain night. Due to this, only a few drivers went out on trac at the beginning of the session, like Carlos Sainz, who had no time to lose after the engine failure yesterday in FP2. Most drivers stayed in their box until the second half of the session, when Grosjean made a mistake and broke the front wing by crashing against the wall, causing a red flag.
Some teams such as Ferrari didn’t use a new set of tyres for their second attempt, so the final timesheet shouldn’t be given a lot of importance. Verstappen was fastest, 1 tenth ahead of Hamilton. Vettel, Bottas, Räikkönen, Massa, Ricciardo, Hülkenberg, Sainz and Kvyat completed the top 10.