Oscar Piastri kept Max Verstappen struggling in the bottom half of the field with Rand Norris’ tables in the final practice session, with McLaren teammates ahead of qualifying.
Piastri led the field midway through the session when the field burned its first soft set, significantly lowering the benchmark with the final flying lap on the new rubber, setting a session best time of 1M 14.916 in three purple sectors.
The Australians were first on the road, and Norris laid out a gauntlet for matching. Britton seemed to start his reply well, with about 0.1 seconds off in the first sector, but his relaxed approach to the start of the lap meant he had enough rubber to set the fastest time in the final sector and set it within 0.032 seconds of his teammates practicing.
McLaren is more comfortable and comfortable faster than any other team, so they set up Paul’s fascinating duel later on Saturday.
Charles Leclerc stayed third in orders.
However, Lewis Hamilton has improved significantly since Friday, but he has placed himself right behind his teammates, despite being slower than Leclerc.
Andrea Kimi Antoneri was fifth in the fastest Mercedes, but the Italian rookie was 0.829 seconds away from the pace.
Fernando Alonso led Aston Martin teammate Lance to sixth and seventh, indicating that the team’s strong Friday at Hungarrolling was genuine, putting the Silverstone team in the mix, suggesting he made a top-10 start on a qualifying-sensitive circuit.
George Russell was in eighth place in the second Mercedes, ahead of Gabriel Boltret and Nico Halkenberg. Sauber’s teammate Nico Halkenberg finished in the top 10 over Haas’ driver Oliver Baerman.
Max Verstappen was 12th and 1.246 seconds of pain from Piastri’s headline time.
“After trying to secure the rear, it plows into the understeer,” he lamented after the first qualifying simulation lap. His Red Bull racing car appeared to be more compliant than Friday, but the pace wasn’t improving.
Teammate Yuki Tsunoda got worse, finishing the session even further back at 19th place and 0.716. The Japanese driver opposed his engineers due to the misconfiguration of his car ahead of his final qualifying simulation, and at the end of the time he sighed “What a session” with the tone of resignation.
Between the two Red Bull racing drivers, they improved Alpine in 13th place ahead of Liam Lawson and Williams duo Karos Sainz and Alex Albon.
Esteban Ocon finished 17th with Pierre Guthrie, Tsunoda and Isaac Hajar. He rushed the Racing Bulls car to power from his penultimate turn, finishing a fast lap in the run-off zone.
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