Hamilton beats the Bull's in FP3

(Mercedes AMG F1 Team)

Mercedes Lewis Hamilton picked up from where he left off on Thursday by topping the time sheets in the final practice session ahead of this afternoon's qualifying session for tomorrow's Monaco Grand Prix. The 2008 world champion set a benchmark time of 1m 16.758s finishing the session just ahead of Red Bull's Daniel Eicciardo.

Nico Rosberg was third fastest in the second Mercedes just ahead of reigning world champion Sebastian Vettel in the second Red Bull.

It was a good session for the Ferrari duo of Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen as the pair were fifth and sixth respectively. Raikkonen set his 6th place time on soft tyre and was the only driver in the top eight to do so.

Sergio Perez and Nico Hulkenberg did a great ob for the Sahara Force India F1 Team as the pair finished in 7th and 8th place.

The Toro Rosso duo of Jean Eric Vergne and Daniil Kvyat rounded out the top ten for the Italian team. It was a disappointing session ftteri or the McLaren team, who are aiming for 'progress and not points' this weekend according to Jenson Button. The 2009 champion ended the session in 12th place after spending a lot of time in the McLaren garage. 

His team mate Kevin Magnussen was eleventh for the Woking based outfit and will have plenty of data that the team will be able to us for both drivers.

After a positive start to the weekend on Thursday it ended up being a difficult morning for the Williams Martini Racing Team as Valtteri Bottas was 13th for the Grove based team while team mate Felipe Massa 14th. 

Adrian Sutil the 15th fastest time for the Sauber F1 Team but was 2 seconds behind Hamilton's fastest time.

Romain Grosjean was 16th for the Lotus F1 Team while Marussia's Jules Bianchi did a great job for the Banbury based outfit as he finished the morning session in 17th place ahead of the second Lotus of Pastor Maldonado with Esteban Gutierrez in the second Sauber in 19th place. 

Kamui Kobayashi was 20th for the Caterham F1 Team while Max Chilton was 21st in the second Marussia. Caterham's Marus Ericsson rounded out the time sheets in 22nd place.

Qualifying gets underway this afternoon from 1PM (UK time)

©Ben Johnston 2014