Oscar Piastri turned the tables on Lando Norris in the final practice session to lead his McLaren teammate to the fastest time ahead of qualifying while Max Verstappen continued to toil in the bottom half of the field.
Piastri headed the field halfway through the session, when the field burnt through its first set of softs, and he lowered the benchmark considerably with his final flying lap on new rubber, setting a session-best time of 1m 14.916s with three purple sectors.
The Australian was first on the road, laying down the gauntlet for Norris to match. The Briton appeared to start his reply poorly, at around 0.1s off in the first sector, but his relaxed approach to the beginning of the lap meant he had enough rubber to set the fastest time in the final sector and close to within 0.032s of his practice-topping teammate.
With McLaren still comfortably faster than any other team, it sets up a fascinating duel for pole later on Saturday.
Charles Leclerc retained third place in the order, his 0.399s deficit to top spot identical to his gap in FP2.
Lewis Hamilton improved markedly from Friday, however, to put himself directly behind his teammate, albeit he was 0.369s slower than Leclerc.
Andrea Kimi Antonelli was fifth in the fastest Mercedes, but the Italian rookie was 0.829s off the pace, his team showing no clear overnight improvement to close the gap.
Fernando Alonso led Aston Martin teammate Lance Stroll in sixth and seventh, suggesting the team’s strong Friday at the Hungaroring was genuine, putting the Silverstone team in the mix for a top-10 start at his qualifying-sensitive circuit.
George Russell was eighth in the second Mercedes ahead of Gabriel Bortoleto and Nico Hulkenberg, the Sauber teammates around 1.1s off the pace, who rounded out the top 10 ahead of Haas driver Oliver Bearman.
Max Verstappen was a pained 12th and 1.246s off Piastri’s headline time.
“You try to fix the rear and then it ploughs into understeer,” he lamented after his first qualifying simulation laps. Though his Red Bull Racing car looked more compliant than it had on Friday, it showed no improved pace.
Teammate Yuki Tsunoda fared even worse, ending the session 19th and 0.716s further back. The Japanese driver railed against his engineer for some incorrect setting on his car ahead of his final qualifying simulation, and at the end of the hour he sighed, “What a session” with a tone of resignation.
Between the two Red Bull Racing drivers slotted Franco Colapinto, who was improved for Alpine in 13th ahead of Liam Lawson and Williams duo Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon.
Esteban Ocon was 17th ahead of Pierre Gasly, Tsunoda and Isack Hadjar, who spun his Racing Bulls car getting to hastily on the power out of the penultimate turn, ending his fast lap in the run-off zone.
RESULTS
