» Bottas shades Hamilton again in FP3

The Mercedes-AMG juggernaut continued with the Silver Arrows recording yet another clean sweep of practice sessions at the French Grand Prix. As he had done in Friday’s second practice session, Valtteri Bottas edged out teammate Lewis Hamilton for top spot on the timesheets, while rivals Ferrari were left to play catch-up.

It seems all but certain that qualifying will see another front-row lockout for the reigning World Champions and all the evidence points towards the Brackley-based squad stretching their unbeaten run to eight Grand Prix victories by the end of Sunday’s race.

Bottas again showed off the F1 W10’s one-lap pace by breaking the Circuit Paul Ricard’s unofficial lap record with a time of 1:30.159, finishing 0.041 seconds clear of Hamilton in the final reckoning.

The two Ferraris of Charles Leclerc and Sebastian Vettel finished third- and fourth-fastest, with the youngster once again upstaging his four-time World Championship winning teammate who reportedly head seatbelt issues. The SF90 posted purple sectors through the lap’s first and second sector splits which tend to favour straight-line speed. It was in the third and final sector, however – where back-to-back changes of direction do not play to the Ferrari’s strengths – that the Mercedes’ dominated to the tune of over half a second.

That is not to say that Mercedes’ session was completely trouble-free. Both drivers had off-track moments when their cars’ handling snapped away, with Bottas taking to the escape road after a mistake at Turn 3, while Hamilton nearly swapped ends when he hit a bump through Turn 6.

While the gap between Mercedes and Ferrari stretched to roughly half a second, it was something of a chasm back to the other eight teams. Having been threatened to be upstaged by McLaren this weekend, Red Bull Racing claimed ‘best of the rest’ honours – albeit over 1.3 seconds off the pace – with Max Verstappen leading teammate Pierre Gasly.

Mere fractions behind were the McLarens, led by Lando Norris who was just five-hundredths of a second slower than Gasly and nearly a quarter of a second up on teammate Carlos Sainz Jr. The pair was split by Renault’s Daniel Ricciardo, while Alfa Romeo’s Kimi Räikkönen rounded out the top-ten.

Bar a few trips through the circuit’s abundant tarmac run-off areas, the one-hour practice session was relatively devoid of major drama. The biggest concern was for George Russell, who managed just a handful of slow laps in his Williams before reporting a loss of power.

FORMULA 1 PIRELLI GRAND PRIX DE FRANCE 2019 – FREE PRACTICE SESSION 3
	Driver	Team / Entry	Time	Gap	Laps
1.	Valtteri Bottas	Mercedes-AMG Motorsport W10	1:30.159		18
2.	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes-AMG Motorsport W10	1:30.200	+ 0.041	15
3.	Charles Leclerc	Scuderia Ferrari SF90	1:30.605	+ 0.446	15
4.	Sebastian Vettel	Scuderia Ferrari SF90	1:30.633	+ 0.474	13
5.	Max Verstappen	Red Bull Racing RB15	1:31.538	+ 1.379	11
6.	Pierre Gasly	Red Bull Racing RB15	1:31.599	+ 1.440	14
7.	Lando Norris	McLaren F1 Team MCL34	1:31.654	+ 1.495	14
8.	Daniel Ricciardo	Renault F1 Team RS19	1:31.802	+ 1.643	12
9.	Carlos Sainz Jr.	McLaren F1 Team MCL34	1:31.887	+ 1.728	14
10.	Kimi Räikkönen	Alfa Romeo Racing C38	1:31.943	+ 1.784	16
11.	Nico Hülkenberg	Renault F1 Team RS19	1:32.023	+ 1.864	15
12.	Antonio Giovinazzi	Alfa Romeo Racing C38	1:32.171	+ 2.012	15
13.	Alexander Albon	Scuderia Toro Rosso Honda STR14	1:32.178	+ 2.019	16
14.	Romain Grosjean	Haas F1 Team VF-19	1:32.385	+ 2.226	15
15.	Kevin Magnussen	Haas F1 Team VF-19	1:32.400	+ 2.241	13
16.	Sergio Pérez	Racing Point F1 Team RP19	1:32.491	+ 2.332	15
17.	Daniil Kvyat	Scuderia Toro Rosso Honda STR14	1:32.540	+ 2.381	22
18.	Lance Stroll	Racing Point F1 Team RP19	1:32.678	+ 2.519	14
19.	Robert Kubica	ROKiT Williams Racing FW42	1:33.902	+ 3.743	21
20.	George Russell	ROKiT Williams Racing FW42	1:39.987	+ 9.828	4