Vettel fastest as Ferrari moves ahead in Bahrain GP practice three

Vettel beat his Ferrari F1 team-mate Kimi Raikkonen by just 0.050 seconds during qualifying simulations in the closing stages to top the times, relegating the Mercedes of Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton to third and fourth.

Raikkonen had been fastest overall on soft tyres, before Vettel's late surge.

The higher heat of Saturday afternoon in Sakhir makes third practice less relevant to the business end of the weekend, and also ensured laptimes were substantially slower than in Friday evening's second practice session.

Hamilton and Rosberg set identical times to a thousandth of a second on soft tyres, before Rosberg edged Hamilton by 0.036s on super-softs.

The world champion was faster than his team-mate through the first two sectors, but lost crucial time over the final part of the lap, an areas he admits has been a struggle for him so far this weekend.

The Williams of Valtteri Bottas was fifth fastest, ahead of Romain Grosjean's Haas, Daniil Kvyat's Red Bull and the second Haas of Esteban Gutierrez, who complained of Hamilton holding him up at one point in the session.

Felipe Massa tried the new shorter nose on his Williams, but could only lap ninth fastest, just ahead of the second Red Bull of Daniel Ricciardo, though both did their super-soft runs earlier than their rivals.

Marcus Ericsson went 11th fastest for Sauber, followed by Kevin Magnussen's Renault.

McLaren-Honda could not maintain its impressive form from Friday evening, ending up 13th and 14th fastest with Jenson Button just 0.04s faster than rookie team-mate Stoffel Vandoorne.

The Toro Rossos were only 15th and 16th, but neither made runs on the super-soft tyre, preferring to focus mainly on long runs with the soft rubber.

Lower-fuel runs near the end put Verstappen 15th, almost three tenths clear of team-mate Carlos Sainz Jr.

Felipe Nasr was 17th in the second Sauber, ahead of both Force Indias, which also didn't use the super-soft.

Jolyon Palmer set the 20th best time before picking up a puncture on his Renault as the session ended.

The Manor-Mercedes brought up the rear of the order, with Rio Haryanto ahead of Pascal Wehrlein, though Haryanto was the only one of the two to run the super-soft tyre.

PRACTICE THREE TIMES