Hamilton fastest at end of FP3

Lewis Hamilton remains the fastest person in Montreal as the third and final practice session this weekend has come to an end.

Hamilton’s fastest lap of 1:15.610 was enough to keep him at the top of the time sheets ahead of the Williams of Felipe Massa, who posted a lap just 0.476 seconds back. Mercedes Nico Rosberg had to settle for third place after being unable to improve on his fastest lap which was set earlier in the session.

Pastor Maldonado got the third and final free practice session of the Canadian Grand Prix underway, leading the field to the pit lane exit where he would complete a practice start before hitting the track. Vergne and Sutil were quick to follow, before all returned to their respective garages after just one installation lap.

Within five minutes, all teams and drivers with the exception of Red Bull, McLaren and Lewis Hamilton, had completed at least one installation lap. When McLaren driver Kevin Magnussen hit the track, he quickly set the first fastest lap of the morning, though still somewhat off the pace of yesterdays’ fastest lap by Hamilton thanks to running wide at the hairpin which cost valuable seconds.

Before 15 minutes had passed, the entire field had completed an installation lap at minimum as drivers focused their attention on laps on the harder compound Pirelli tyre, before using the latter half of the session to run fast laps on the super-soft Pirelli’s.

Esteban Gutierrez brought out the first yellow flags of today’s session when he ran wide out of turn four, spinning the car on the exit and colliding with the barriers. The yellow flag quickly turned into a red flag in order to allow the marshals to safely remove the damaged car from the track and four minutes later the practice was green flagged, leaving 40 minutes on the clock. Sauber will have a lot of work to do in order to restore Gutierrez’s car to racing form before qualifying this afternoon.

Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen spent a handful of laps mid-session at the top of the time-sheets, before Mercedes’ Hamilton and Rosberg returned to form and took their places at the top. The pair traded fastest laps within the low 1:16’s, and gave the impression that they were fighting for qualifying as opposed to setting up their cars for qualifying ahead. Hamilton had some near misses whilst pushing his car to the limit, whilst Rosberg came close to becoming the next inductee to the Wall of Champions.

Meanwhile the Williams’ of Massa and Bottas also posted laps faster than the Ferrari, slotting into third and fourth with 25 minutes remaining.

McLaren’s Kevin Magnussen also had a near miss with the wall at Turn 2 when he spun his car in the exact same place as Kamui Kobayashi did in yesterday’s afternoon practice. Out breaking himself into turn one, Magnussen found himself on the grass without any traction. Without any control, the car spun into turn two, coming to a stop just feet from the wall but allowing the driver to return to the track without any damage to the car or interruption to the practice.

Kimi Raikkonen became the first driver to swap onto the super-soft Pirelli tyre in preparation for qualifying this afternoon, yet his first fast lap was still 0.918 seconds off the pace of Lewis Hamilton at the front of the pack. At the same time, Sergio Perez became the next victim of an on track spin, hitting the grass at the chicane whilst braking. Pointing in the wrong direction, Perez recovered without incident.

The track was arguably at its busiest within the final ten minutes of the session when the majority of drivers’ took to the track to complete a super-soft flying lap. After a tough day of little running yesterday, Jean-Eric Vergne quickly jumped into sixth place on a super-soft lap, and Massa once again moved himself ahead of the Ferrari, posting a third fastest lap with minutes to go.

Hamilton and Rosberg continued to push, though were both unable to improve on their times whilst Felipe Massa went faster still, taking second place and splitting the Mercedes for the first time this practice. Caterham’s Kamui Kobayashi’s struggles looked to continue when he brought his car to a halt at Turn 10. He would exit the car leaving the marshals to push the car away, bringing his practice to an early end.

There is now a two hour break before the cars return to the track to Qualify for the Formula 1 Grand Prix du Canada 2014 at 13:00 local time.