Hamilton quickest again in final practice

Reigning Formula 1 champion Lewis Hamilton topped Saturday morning practice at Silverstone to complete a clean sweep of 70th Anniversary Grand Prix practice sessions for Mercedes.

Teams’ reluctance to use any of the valuable harder-compound tyres seemingly contributed to a slow start to the session, with it taking 12 minutes until a time was put on the board by Lando Norris’ McLaren.

Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, Racing Point’s Lance Stroll and AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly then took turns at the top of the times, before Valtteri Bottas took his Mercedes W11 out of the pits with the halfway point approaching and assumed the lead comfortably with a 1m27.509s.

Hamilton came up 0.017s short of matching Bottas on his first try, but although the Finn then lowered the benchmark by another half tenth, Hamilton’s second attempt on the same set of softs allowed him to leapfrog his team-mate with a 1m27.280s.

A fresh set of mediums allowed Norris to narrowly retake the top spot with 20 minutes left on the clock, but he was swiftly relegated to third as the two Mercedes equipped new softs.

Hamilton was quicker than Bottas again, outpacing the Finn by 0.163s with his 1m26.621s effort.

This secured another 1-2 for Mercedes, although Red Bull driver Max Verstappen looked in with a chance at outpacing one or both after recording a lightning-fast first sector, only to then come up on Stroll’s Racing Point through Maggots and Becketts.

A rabid Verstappen radioed in a string of expletives, before adding: “I find this unbelievable. How can you be so blind?!”

The Dutchman’s subsequent attempt on worn tyres left him seventh, behind Norris, the Racing Point cars of Nico Hulkenberg and Stroll, and Leclerc – whose Ferrari team-mate Sebastian Vettel was five tenths slower in 13th.

Verstappen’s team-mate Alex Albon was two hundredths slower in eighth, while Renault’s Esteban Ocon and McLaren’s Carlos Sainz Jr completed the top 10.

Ocon’s team-mate Daniel Ricciardo was only 14th after having his first push lap on fresh softs late on compromised by a run-in with Norris.

“I don’t know why the fuck he would’ve overtaken me if he’s on high fuel,” Ricciardo told his team of his 2021 McLaren team-mate.

Ferrari drivers latest to change engine components

Both Ferrari drivers ran new internal combustion engines, turbochargers and MGU-H components in FP3 after Vettel’s failure in Friday practice, with Leclerc’s power unit changed as a precaution.

They join other drivers on fresh engines for the second Silverstone race, although Red Bull and Renault have made changes for strategic reasons.

At Renault and Red Bull respectively, Ricciardo and Albon have a new engine, turbo, MGU-H and MGU-K.

Verstappen has fresh versions of those components as well, plus a new energy store and control electronics in his Honda-powered Red Bull.

Honda called it “a strategic choice to add more components to the pool” and intends to rotate the engines in future rounds.

It had the same strategy for AlphaTauri but Pierre Gasly already required a second engine in Hungary and Honda wants to monitor Daniil Kvyat’s existing engine following his heavy crash last week.

Meanwhile, Mercedes has fitted new MGU-Ks to Bottas’s works car and all four customer cars across Racing Point and Williams.

This is in line with its original plan, with the manufacturer having brought forward the new MGU-K for Hamilton last weekend as a precaution.

Practice 3 Results