Verstappen tops dry final practice from Ferrari pair

Verstappen, who will be guaranteed a second title this weekend if he wins and takes fastest lap, found just shy of three tenths over Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc to head the pack.

Although there was some surprise that FP1 and FP2 took place at all given the pre-event forecast for a washout, the wet running on Friday had a lasting impact as it paved the way for a hectic start to the final hour of practice on Saturday.

With all three dry Pirelli compounds still to be assessed by the teams, the end of the pitlane was a hive of activity as FP3 began, with FP2 pacesetter George Russell and Sainz leading a queue of cars.

Again, given the time constraints, only the Alfa Romeo duo opted for instal laps as everyone else stayed put out on track to quickly set a headline time before the switch to race stints.

Medium-shod Russell soon posted the first effort, lapping in 1m37.969s before Sainz on softs lowered that to 1m35.491s – with the offset between C2 and C3 tyres predicted to be 1.2s.

Then, as is seemingly par for the course during free practice running this season, champion-elect Verstappen blew the times away at his first attempt after five minutes.

He pounded the soft-shod RB18 round in 1m32.050s to sit 1.186s clear of team-mate Perez as McLaren’s Lando Norris ran 2.2s adrift in third but kept a whisker ahead of Daniel Ricciardo.

After the opening salvo, Sainz headed up the Ferrari attack in eighth while Leclerc was 11th after his first run on mediums tyres, the Monegasque notably sideways exiting Degner corner.

The Mercedes pair, meanwhile, were down in 14th and 15th as Hamilton pipped Russell, the seven-time champion fighting snaps of oversteer induced by the high wind speeds.

Fernando Alonso was, at that time, the quickest driver fitted with hard tyres – the two-time champion running ninth and 0.9s faster than Hamilton on the same C1 white-walled rubber.

Then came a mid-session lull – notable for Sainz locking into the chicane and blaming it on Leclerc a few metres up the road – as most settled in for race stints and dropped several seconds off the pace.

But as the final 30 minutes kicked off, several cars gunned it for the top of the leaderboard again, with the Ferraris jumping to first and second on a set of fresh, red-walled soft tyres.

Sainz deposed Verstappen by some 1.085s as he bolted to a 1m30.965s and as per the wet running, found a few tenths over Leclerc…