Oscar Piastri turned the tables on Lando Norris in the last practice session to lead his McLaren teammate to the fastest time for qualifying, while Max Verstappen continued to struggle in the bottom half of the field.
Piastri led the field halfway through the session, when the field burned by his first set of softs, and he lowered the benchmark considerably with his last flying round on new rubber, making a session-best time of 1m 14,916s set with three purple sectors.
The Australian was first on the road and laid the glove for Norris to match. The Brit seemed to start his answer badly, about 0.1s out in the first sector, but his relaxed approach of the start of the round meant that he had enough rubber to determine the fastest time in the last sector and close by within 0.032s of his practical topping teammate.
With McLaren still comfortably faster than any other team, it will prepare a fascinating game for Paal later on Saturday.
Charles Leclerc retained third place in the order, his shortage of 0.399s to be identical to his gap in FP2.
Lewis Hamilton, however, significantly improved from Friday to place himself directly behind his teammate, although he was 0.369s slower than Leclerc.
Andrea Kimi Antonelli finished fifth in the fastest Mercedes, but the Italian Rookie was 0.829s of the pace, his team showed no clear overnight improvement to close the gap.
Fernando Alonso led Aston Martin teammate Lance Stroll in sixth and seventh, which suggests that the strong Friday of the team at the Hungaroring was real, so that the Silverstone team was put in the mix for a top 10 start on his qualification-sensitive circuit.
George Russell was eighth in the second Mercedes for Gabriel Bortoleto and Nico Hulkenberg, the Sauber teammates around 1.1 seconds of the pace, who finish the top 10 for Haas driver Oliver Bearman.
Max Verstappen was a painful 12th and 1,246s from Piastri’s head time.
“You try to repair the back and then it plays in understeer,” he complained after his first qualifying simulation rounds. Although his Red Bull Racing car seemed to be more compliant than on Friday, it did not show any improved pace.
Teammate Yuki Tsunoda did it even worse and finished the session 19th and 0.716s further back. The Japanese driver stuck against his engineer for an incorrect setting on his car prior to his final qualifying simulation, and at the end of the hour he sighed: “What a session” with a tone of dismissal.
Franco Colapinto threw between the two Red Bull Racing drivers, which was improved for Alpine in the 13th for Liam Lawson and Williams Duo Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon.
Esteban Ocon was 17th for Pierre Gasly, Tsunoda and Isack Hadjar, who spun his Racing Bulls car that hurriedly came from the penultimate turn and ended his fast lap in the output zone.
Result
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