Practice report
Formula 1 Austrian GP
Austrian GP: Vettel on top in FP3, Verstappen hits trouble
Sebastian Vettel was fastest in final practice for the Austrian Grand Prix as Ferrari overhauled Formula 1 rival Mercedes ahead of qualifying at the Red Bull Ring.
Scott Mitchell
Edited: Jun 30, 2018, 11:38 AM
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Vettel emerged on top of a rapidly-changing battle between the two teams through the session to beat title rival Lewis Hamilton by just 0.029s.
Valtteri Bottas lapped just over a tenth slower than Vettel but the second Ferrari of Kimi Raikkonen was a quarter of a second further off the pace.
Raikkonen was the first driver to set a flying lap and worked his way into the 1m04s before being usurped by Vettel by just 0.017s.
Bottas and Hamilton, who had traffic on his first flying lap, followed the Ferraris as the top four lapped barely a tenth apart, before Vettel pumped in a 1m04.699s.
Hamilton's next flier was 0.027s faster than that, before Bottas bested both on a 1m04.594s.
Vettel set a personal best but could not wrest back top spot and fell 0.006s short of Bottas's time at the end of the opening half an hour.
Hamilton and Raikkonen then wasted chances to go quickest, Hamilton sliding wide at the exit of Turn 3 and Raikkonen skating across the gravel through the fast Turn 7-8 esses.
Raikkonen continued after that off and his next flying lap, completed without error, put him fastest on a 1m04.470s.
The succession of improvements continued though, and with 20 minutes to go Vettel returned to top of the pile on a 1m04.159s.
That briefly established a Ferrari one-two but Bottas ended that almost immediately with a time 0.045s slower than Vettel's.
The gap grew slightly when Vettel posted his final improvement, a 1m04.070s, with just over 15 minutes left, before Hamilton got back ahead of Bottas by a tenth.
With Ferrari and Mercedes engaged in a private battle at the top of the leaderboard Red Bull ended up a distant fifth and sixth, 0.7s back.
Max Verstappen had a trip through the gravel on the exit of Turn 4 midway through the session but improved later on to get ahead of teammate Daniel Ricciardo.
However, his session ended early when he ran slightly off-track again at Turn 4 and then pulled up on the right-hand side of the circuit, reporting his Renault engine had switched off.
Once the yellow flags were withdrawn following the recovery of Verstappen's car, Kevin Magnussen jumped to seventh in his Haas before teammate Romain Grosjean edged ahead by a tenth.
They were the last drivers to lap within a second of Vettel as Renault's Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc completed the top 10.
Leclerc prevented any final improvements in the last two minutes when he stopped his Sauber on the right-hand side of the circuit just after exiting the first corner with a reported engine problem.
ClaDriverChassisEngineLapsTimeGap 1 
Sebastian Vettel Ferrari Ferrari 22 1'04.070 2 
Lewis Hamilton Mercedes Mercedes 24 1'04.099 0.029 3 
Valtteri Bottas Mercedes Mercedes 24 1'04.204 0.134 4 Kimi Raikkonen Ferrari Ferrari 22 1'04.470 0.400 5 
Max Verstappen Red Bull TAG 14 1'04.791 0.721 6 
Daniel Ricciardo Red Bull TAG 18 1'04.891 0.821 7 
Romain Grosjean Haas Ferrari 17 1'04.916 0.846 8 
Kevin Magnussen Haas Ferrari 16 1'05.013 0.943 9 
Carlos Sainz Renault Renault 22 1'05.086 1.016 10 
Charles Leclerc Sauber Ferrari 25 1'05.219 1.149 11 Nico Hulkenberg Renault Renault 19 1'05.228 1.158 12 Pierre Gasly Toro Rosso Honda 25 1'05.264 1.194 13 Esteban Ocon Force India Mercedes 21 1'05.444 1.374 14 Fernando Alonso McLaren Renault 19 1'05.448 1.378 15 
Sergio Perez Force India Mercedes 24 1'05.502 1.432 16 
Marcus Ericsson Sauber Ferrari 27 1'05.699 1.629 17 
Brendon Hartley Toro Rosso Honda 23 1'05.705 1.635 18 
Stoffel Vandoorne McLaren Renault 16 1'05.837 1.767 19 
Lance Stroll Williams Mercedes 23 1'06.029 1.959 20 
Sergey Sirotkin Williams Mercedes 22 1'06.318 2.248
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