Portugal, FP3: Verstappen beats Hamilton to top spot in final practice

Red Bull’s Max Verstappen went quickest in final practice for tomorrow’s Portuguese Grand Prix, beating championship leader Lewis Hamilton by almost three tenths of a second.

The final hour of practice got off to a slow start, with just Haas drivers Mick Schumacher and Nikita Mazepin setting lap times. But after ten minutes the action began to heat up and Yuki Tsunoda took over at the top of the timesheet with a lap of 1:20.997.

A steady stream of drivers then enjoyed short spells at the top of the order befote the Mercedes and Red Bull cars appeared soon almost a third of the way through the session.

Red Bull’s Sergio Perez set the pace initially with a lap of 1:18.840s but was soon bettered, first by Hamilton and then by Verstappen, who led the way at the half way mark with a lap of 1:18.545.

In the final stages Hamilton went for another run but though he improved his time it was still only good enough to narrow the gap from P2 to 0.180.

Then, despite complaining of front-end instability and poor performance in the third sector, Verstappen found more time on the 4.653km track to post a session-fastest time of 1:18.489, 0.236s clear of Hamilton. Valtteri Bottas took third 0.331 off the pace, while Pérez finished fourth.

Esteban Ocon impressed to hand Alpine fifth place in a session that appeared much more difficult for team-mate Fernando Alonso, who finished in 14th place. Sixth and seventh places respectively were taken Ferrari drivers Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz, while Lando Norris was eighth for McLaren ahead of AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly and Alfa Romeo’s Kimi Raikkonen.