Barcelona, FP3: Hamilton leads Mercedes 1-2 in final practice

Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton continued to set the pace in Barcelona, topping the timesheet in final practice ahead of team-mate Valtteri Bottas and Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel, as Toro Rosso’s Brendon Hartley brought he session to an early end with a heavy crash.

With only a few minutes remaining in the session, Hartley got on the dirt beyond the kerb on the entry to the fast Turn 9 and his Toro Rosso immediately swapped end, sending him backwards across the gravel trap and hard into the barriers.

While Hartley reported himself unhurt ahead of a visit to the medical centre, his car was severely damaged. The situation was made worse when the during recovery the entire rear sheared off.

Red flags were immediately shown and that froze the order, with Hamilton at the top of the timesheet following a qualifying sim that netted him a time of 1:17.281.

The Briton had set the lap with just under 20 minutes remaining. He and team-mate Bottas had earlier led the way in the longer runs, but using soft compound Pirellis, as Ferrari’s supersoft programme saw Vettel take third ahead of team-mate Kimi Räikkönen. Red Bull meanwhile spent the first half hour on medium compound tyres with Daniel Ricciardo posting a time of 1:18.631, 0.787 down on Hamilton’s soft tyre tume, to slot into fifth place ahead of Haas’ Romain Grosjean and Red Bull team-mate Max Verstappen.

Verstappen might have been further up the order but after his first run he returned to the Red Bull garage with an electrical issue. He would take no further part in the session.

When the switch to quali sims arrived soon after the halfway mark, Ferrari initially led the way, with Vettel ahead of Räikkönen, but Bottas then bolted on the red-banded tyres and took P1, with Hamilton swiftly usurping his team-mate but by the slim margin of 0.013s.

Vettel finished 0.269 behind Hamilton and just three hundredths of a second ahead of Räikkönen in another tight intra-team battle at the top of the leaderboard.

Fifth place was taken by Ricciardo. The Australian appeared to struggle for a good feeling on the supersofts and after a couple of warm-up laps he finally went for a time, posting a lap of 1:17.981, 0.7s behind Hamilton.

Ricciardo was the last man inside a second of the champion, with Kevin Magnussen in sixth place but 1.076s behind Hamilton. The Dane was a healthy 0.349s ahead of seventh-placed t4eam-mate Romain Grosjean.

Carlos Sainz took eighth place in the works Renault, while fellow Spaniard led the French manufacturer’s customers squads, taking ninth place just over six hundredths of a second behind Sainz. Pierre Gasly of Toro Rosso was tenth, 1.605s behind Hamilton.