Lewis Hamilton is fastest in Saturday’s rainy F1 practice session

Rosberg had made a determined first move towards stopping Hamilton s march to his third title when he had topped the times in opening free practice.

Heavy rain and thunderstorms are expected to wreak havoc with this weekend’s schedule as Lewis Hamilton bids to close out his third Formula One world championship. Hamilton, the reigning double world champion, has put on a dominant championship defence, winning nine of the 15 races so far this year to lead the championship standings on 302 points. He’s on track for another drivers championship this year. Alonso only has two titles to his name from 2005 and 2006 but is considered by many to be the most complete driver on the grid, and famously clashed with Hamilton when paired with the Brit during his rookie season at McLaren in 2007. I had those setbacks last season, and I was like: “‘Jeeze, I’m 29 points behind, this is tough.’ Compared to past year it’s more relaxing”.

The Red Bull duo of Daniel Ricciardo and Daniil Kvyat performed a dance together, Nico Rosberg played keepy-upy with Mercedes boss Niki Lauda, while Hamilton scaled the pit wall to wave to fans in the main grandstand.

We’ve seen it coming from Ferrari this season and I expect Sebastian Vettel to be strong this weekend but more importantly I see them as title contenders in 2016. The order finished with Lewis Hamilton fastest ahead of Sebastian Vettel and Nico Hulkenberg.

There are a number of different scenarios as to how Hamilton can clinch the championship in Austin.

Without wanting to preempt anything, go into “ifs” and “buts” or even acknowledge that the weekend felt in any way out of the ordinary, Hamilton recognised that he would have to refocus his career ambitions.

Any country considering a model for a new Formula 1 race could do far, far worse than look at what Austin, Texas, has achieved with the US Grand Prix.

As he said in Japan two weeks ago, he never aspired to be like any other driver.

If it causes extensive damage in the capital Mexico City, there could be a knock-on effect for the race at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez track, which is hosting a grand prix for the first time since 1992. Despite this, a superb sixth-place in Russian Federation may well have cemented Nasr’s bid to be the best-value fantasy driver this season – at 63.33 points per million spent, Nasr is over 13 points clear of his nearest rival.

It had been anticipated that final practice would be scrapped after the circuit organisers urged fans to keep away, but, with no threat of lightning in the area, the session went ahead.

“I don’t think nearly anybody had it until they were well past”. Along with Nico Rosberg, the pair should be among those favored to start on pole if qualifying were to be run, whether that would be later today or early tomorrow, but if the session is cancelled outright, Hamilton will start on pole and, by virtue of a 10-position grid penalty for engine changes, Vettel will start 12th.

“Of course, there is still a third party in the mix and we, as a team, must make absolutely sure that our drivers have everything they need to make sure we come out on top”.