Austria, FP3: Bottas tops final Red Bull Ring practice

Williams’ Valtteri Bottas topped the final practice session timesheet at the red Bull Ring, finishing five hundredths of a second ahead of Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton, with just 0.15s separating the top five cars.

Bottas’ fastest lap of 1:09.848 came in the dying seconds of the hour-long session as the traditional flurry of runs on the quicker option tyres saw times tumble to just over a second off the lap record of 1:08.337 set by Michael Schumacher in 2003.

Felipe Massa in the second Williams was third fastest with a time of 1:09.901, with Daniil Kvyat fourth, two hundredths of a second further back. Fifth place, just 0.151 down on Bottas, went to Nico Rosberg in the second Mercedes.

Rosberg had set the pace in the first three quarters of the session, on the soft tyre, the German finishing the opening phase ahead of the Williams cars of Bottas and Massa and the Ferrari of Fernando Alonso.

However, when the supersoft tyre went on it was Hamilton who picked up the Mercedes baton, the Briton going quickest on the red-banded Pirelli tyre with a few minutes to go. Bottas though was flying and an excellent final sector boosted him to the top of the table.

Rosberg might have improved on fifth but on his final lap he complained of sudden understeer and also lost use of DRS when the system was disabled due to an off for Kamui Kobayashi.

Sixth place went to Alonso, who was just two tenths slower than Bottas. Seventh fastest was Daniel Ricciardo, though the Australian was half a second off the pace. It has been a difficult weekend so far for Red Bull Racing and neither Ricciardo nor team-mate Sebastian Vettel set a time in the first half of the session.

When the pair eventually emerged they made slow progress with Vettel’s first flying lap putting him 13th. The champion ended the soft tyre phase in 11th with Ricciardo 12th.

The Australian advanced to seventh by the flag but Vettel continued to struggle eventually finishing tenths behind Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen and eighth-placed Kevin Magnussen of McLaren.

Jenson Button had a more taxing time in the second McLaren. A brake problem saw the Briton go off circuit early on and when he returned to the garage a small fire brake broke out. With that extinguished his crew set about investigating the problem. Button’s car eventually required a new brake caliper and replacement floor. He ended up completing just four laps for 22nd position.

Force India’s Sergio Perez also had a big off, the Mexican sliding wide in the final corner. His car bounced across the grass and was briefly airborne before he managed to regain control and guide his car back to the pits.