Ferrari continued to hold the edge over Red Bull and Mercedes ahead of qualifying for the Malaysian Grand Prix after Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel topped the timesheets in final practice.
Although Raikkonen's fastest lap was 0.6s slower than Vettel's best effort on Friday, it was still enough to hold a 0.211s margin over the closest non-Ferrari rival, which was once again Daniel Ricciardo's Red Bull. However, the session ended in worrying circumstances for Ferrari as a technical issue saw Vettel forced to crawl back to the pits in second gear on his final run. Immediately after the session it was unclear how serious the problem was as the team set to work assessing the car ahead of a two hour gap before qualifying.