Russell leads Hamilton for Mercedes 1-2 in FP3

Charles Leclerc took fourth for Ferrari but ended up even further back from the dominant Mercedes pair, complaining about understeer aboard his F1-75.

If Ferrari can solve that, F1 may get a three-team fight for pole on Saturday at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, with Red Bull also needing to ease Verstappen’s path over the kerbs around the track that held him back in this session.

Mercedes, conversely, looks to have a smoother build up towards qualifying with the W13s looking more planted in FP3 at a venue where the thin air at high altitude negates the impact of that package’s extra drag, which is a hinderance at other circuits.

As the one-hour session commenced, Valtteri Bottas led the pack out of the pits – the Alfa Romeo running the medium tyres for the initial laps – and he duly set the first place benchmark at 1m21.462s.

A few minutes later, Hamilton was the first of the frontrunners to emerge – his Mercedes fitted with softs from the off, as was the case for all his rivals.

Hamilton’s opening effort moved him into first place, although he had to beat Bottas’s second flying lap of his opening run that had brought the best time down to a 1m21.041s.

With a 1m20.505s, Hamilton moved ahead – but only for a few seconds as Leclerc, looking to make up for his costly FP2 crash, was following closely behind and going quicker.

Leclerc’s opening effort moved him into first on a 1m20.487s, which stood as the best time until the end of the first 10 minutes when Sainz slotted in ahead to break the 1m20s bracket on 1m19.884s.

After Perez put in Red Bull’s first softs flier that left him 0.354s adrift before Leclerc’s second flying lap meant he squeezed in behind his team-mate, Russell produced a smooth opening effort to shoot to the top of the times on a 1m19.405s.

After Mick Schumacher had spun off after hitting the kerbs too hard at Turn 10 – as Verstappen did in FP1 – and briefly come to a tyre-smoking stop in the runoff behind Turn 11, Verstappen emerged as the session’s opening third was about to end.

As is so often the case with the world champion in practice sessions, he immediately went fastest with a 1m19.296s – but was unhappy with his handling over the kerbs at the first corners, as his RB18 had snapped left with oversteer exiting Turn 3.

After a few cooldown laps and a trip through the pits, Verstappen completed his second flier on the…