British GP, FP3: Bottas tops final practice

Valtteri Bottas topped the timesheet in final practice for the British Grand Prix beating Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton by just over a tenths of a second. Max Verstappen was third for Red Bull Racing, three tenths of a second off Bottas’ pace. Racing Point, which set the pace on Friday, saw Lance Stroll finish fourth in the session.

The 60 minutes of running got underway in much cooler temperatures than Friday with thje air temperature some around 15 degrees lower than in FP2. It was similarly windy though and teams reported strong gusts at many places on track, particularly around Becketts and Turn 7, Luffield, making fine-tuning of set-up difficult.

Sebastian Vettel set the early pace, with the Ferrari driver seeking to make up for time lost yesterday when an intercooler issues restricted him to just two laps in the morning and work on his car’s pedal box saw him miss a portion of the afternoon.

However, around 20 minutes into the session the Mercedes cars emerged on soft tyres and immediately jumped to the top of the order. Hamilton and Bottas traded P1 times for the next 15 minutes but it was Bottas who eventually held sway with his time of 1:25.873s. That left him 0.1s clear of his teammate and the only man to dip below the 1m26s mark.

Verstappen took third 0.300 behind Hamilton, with the Dutchman looking more comfortable with his RB16 than on Friday. It was another troubled outing for team-mate Alex Albon, however.

The Thai driver was seeking to make up for time lost following his heavy crash at Stowe on Friday afternoon, but an electrical problem on his car in FP3 kept him in the garage until 15 minutes before the flag. He struggled to find a rhythm in his few runs and finished the session in P13, just in front of Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel who again reported problems with his brake pedal.

It was a better morning for Vettel’s team-mate Charles Leclerc who took sixth place behind McLaren’s Carlos Sainz. Lando Norris took sixth for McLaren, ahead of Renault’s Daniel Ricciardo, who set the quickest time in the first sector.

Nico Hulkenberg in his second session back in F1, took ninth for Racing Point, with the German driver finishing 0.2s slower than new teammate Stroll. Pierre Gasly rounded out the top 10 for AlphaTauri.