Mercedes driver George Russell topped the timesheets in Saturday afternoon’s third and final practice session for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, leading the way from McLaren’s Lando Norris while Max Verstappen continued to battle balance problems aboard his Red Bull.

After a disrupted first day of running, FP3 gave the field a chance to catch up on mileage and dial their cars in further at the Yas Marina Circuit, albeit with the side note that the conditions were largely unrepresentative compared to the evening qualifying session and race.

Across several soft tyre runs, Russell worked his way down to a benchmark time of 1m 24.418s to finish just under a tenth clear of Norris, with the latter’s team mate, Oscar Piastri, three tenths back in third position.

It was another difficult session for reigning world champion Verstappen, whose balance struggles on Friday continued across the final practice hour, prompting several slips and slides and a host of set-up changes in a bid to make progress.

After an aborted late run on soft tyres, a final set of tweaks and one more effort at least triggered a rise to sixth on the timing screen, but the Dutchman was the best part of a second adrift and clearly not comfortable behind the wheel of the RB19.