FP3: Verstappen heads dominant Red Bull one-two in final practice

F1 Grand Prix, GP United Kingdom, Silverstone Circuit

Max Verstappen topped the third and final practice for the British Grand Prix, beating his team mate Sergio Perez by over four tenths of a second. Ferrari's Charles Leclerc took third, but he was almost half a second behind his championship rival.

It was cloudy when the third practice kicked off, but the rain did not disrupt the final 60-minute session. It meant that the engineers and drivers could make up for the time they lost in the opening session due to the weather conditions.

The first part of the session saw the Mercedes and Ferrari drivers battle it out for the first place with Charles Leclerc heading the leaderboard early on. As usually in the final practice, reigning world champion Max Verstappen joined the action later on, but he quickly managed to fly to the top with his first hot lap.

Interestingly, Lewis Hamilton could improve on his fourth timed lap on his first set of soft tyres, demonstrating both the improvement of his Mercedes W13 and the durability of Pirelli's red-walled tyres on the cold Silverstone track.

When top drivers started to hurry out for their second run on a second fresh set of soft tyres, Max Verstappen posted a 1m27.901s to head into qualifying at as the man to beat. Although his team mate Sergio Perez appeared to struggle for the perfect aerodynamic balance early on, he managed to end up second fastest, albeit 0.410s adrift.

McLaren's Lando Norris and Alfa Romeo's Valtteri Bottas established themselves as the best of the rest. There was nothing to choose behind the Briton and the Finn with the 9th quickest Mick Schumacher being only three tenths of a second faster than the 16th fastest Lance Stroll.

Behind the extremly close midfield, the big surprise was AlphaTauri's Japanese driver Yuki Tsunoda and McLaren's Daniel Ricciardo, who ended up over two seconds adrift of Verstappen.

Williams racer Nicholas Latifi and Haas driver Kevin Magnussen rounded out the leaderboard in P19 and P20 respectively.