Abu Dhabi Grand Prix Qualifiers LIVE: Latest F1 updates from Hamilton and Verstappen’s final practice session

The checkers waved and Hamilton couldn’t have been better in his lead. Here are the results of the last practice session:

Perez is issuing some warnings about being a threat to the front row and sitting in fourth as it stands. He’s still seven tenths of a second behind Hamilton’s fastest lap. The Briton is back on track and looks set to take one last lap.

Now Verstappen posts a flying lap and that’s encouraging for Red Bull. He is just two tenths of a second ahead of Hamilton, and engineers believe the hot track is working in Mercedes’ favor. Remember, it will cool a lot before the qualifiers start at 1pm.

Verstappen was now in a state of being unable to use the soft tyres but gave up his flying track after missing a turn on the sixth corner. “It’s unbelievable,” the Dutchman said over his radio.

Hamilton told the Mercedes team that the back of his car was very hot. The track temperature is now around 38°C, although that should cool down considerably between this final practice session and the start of qualifying.

Hamilton is almost 1.5 seconds faster than Verstappen so far, however, the Red Bull driver is still using medium tyres. We’ll get a more realistic look at the gap as he transitions into advanced training near the end of his final workout.

Hamilton had a perfect lap but slipped a bit on turn 13. That didn’t affect the British’s time much, however, setting a new fastest lap of 1:23.27411. Almost 3/4 seconds faster than his teammates.

Bottas is currently the fastest with a time of 1:24.02510, three hundredths of a second ahead of teammate Hamilton.

So much of tomorrow’s Grand Prix could depend on grid order and whether Bottas can grab a top spot and then provide some protection for Hamilton. However, it is Verstappen’s teammate Perez who is currently third fastest in this training session, after posting a lap 1:24,832. Bottas is right behind at 1:25.0458.