FERRARI'S Sebastian Vettel posted the fastest time in final practice for Sunday's Monaco Grand Prix.
The four-time world champion set a best lap of one minute and 14.650 seconds at the principality to finish the session only 0.018 seconds faster than world champion Lewis Hamilton.
Nico Rosberg, the championship leader, was third fastest in the sister Mercedes ahead of the Red Bull pair of Daniel Ricciardo, who was quickest in practice on Thursday, and Max Verstappen.
READ MORE: Family of Jules Bianchi launch legal action against FIA over fatal Formula One crash
Verstappen, the 18-year-old who opened his winning account so memorably in Spain a fortnight ago, clattered the barriers at Massenet and sustained damage to the front right of his Red Bull.
British rookie Jolyon Palmer was also in the wars at a circuit where the smallest of errors are penalised. He was fortunate not to hit the wall at the super-quick swimming pool section after losing control of his Renault. The 25-year-old came within inches of a date with the barriers, but avoided any damage.
The McLaren duo of Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button were 12th and 13th, with Palmer, on his grand prix debut in Monte Carlo, 20th, more than one second adrift of his Renault team-mate Kevin Magnussen.
READ MORE: Family of Jules Bianchi launch legal action against FIA over fatal Formula One crash
Earlier, it was revealed that Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull will be first to test Pirelli's 2017 tyres later this summer. The new tyres, wider in diameter, are among a number of sweeping changes to the sport's technical regulations for next season.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article