Lewis Hamilton topped the Saturday practice session at Silverstone for the British GP. Behind him in the timing sheet were Kimi Raikkonen, teammate Valtteri Bottas, and Sebastian Vettel.
Lewis Hamilton Fastest As Hartley Has Scary Crash
The 60-minute long free practice session started under cloudy, but improving weather. The air temperature was 24 degrees C and the track temperature was 45 degrees C. The Pirelli tyre choice at this race is the ice-blue striped Hard tyre, white striped Medium tyre, and yellow striped Soft tyre.
Since yesterday a “sausage” part of a runoff has been added to turn 13 on the course, to stop drivers from going completely off the track at that turn. Despite this being new to the drivers today, it seemingly did not affect their performance too much.
Scary Crash For Brendon Hartley
Halfway through the session driving came to a stoppage when Brendon Hartley had a hard crash into the barriers. On the radio, he declared it was a suspension failure, with a front tyre on the car snapping, taking him completely off track. Luckily Hartley was able to walk away from the accident, despite the collision being nearly head-on. The session was red-flagged.
Manageable Issues For Other Teams
Earlier on in the session Verstappen had apparent issues with his car, saying that he “went to upshift but it downshifted instead.” He did not seem to have any notable issues after this radio message.
Lewis Hamilton put in a 1:26.722s lap time to get fastest lap of the session. Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen came in second just 0.093 seconds behind Hamilton. Topping off the podium results was Mercedes teammate Valtteri Bottas, who was 0.642 behind Hamilton. Due to Hartley’s crash he was the only driver in the session that never put in a flying lap later in the session.
FP3 Results:
| Pos | Driver | Time | Gap | Laps |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1:26.722 | 15 | ||
| 2 | 1:26.815 | +0.093s | 14 | |
| 3 | 1:27.364 | +0.642s | 17 | |
| 4 | 1:27.851 | +1.129s | 8 | |
| 5 | 1:28.012 | +1.290s | 22 | |
| 6 | 1:28.018 | +1.296s | 15 | |
| 7 | 1:28.146 | +1.424s | 18 | |
| 8 | 1:28.418 | +1.696s | 16 | |
| 9 | 1:28.554 | +1.832s | 18 | |
| 10 | 1:28.814 | +2.092s | 17 | |
| 11 | 1:28.917 | +2.195s | 14 | |
| 12 | 1:29.066 | +2.344s | 15 | |
| 13 | 1:29.070 | +2.348s | 17 | |
| 14 | 1:29.094 | +2.372s | 12 | |
| 15 | 1:29.133 | +2.411s | 15 | |
| 16 | 1:29.829 | +3.107s | 13 | |
| 17 | 1:29.984 | +3.262s | 17 | |
| 18 | 1:30.004 | +3.282s | 17 | |
| 19 | 1:30.050 | +3.328s | 4 | |
| 20 | 3 |
MAIN PHOTO:
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