Mercedes AMG on top in final practice

F1 Grand Prix, GP Great-Britain, Silverstone Circuit

Mercedes AMG proved to be on top of their game once again as both drivers easily stayed ahead of the competition during the final practice session at Silverstone, ahead of this afternoon's qualifying session.

With 20°C under a mild sun, the weather proved to be much more favourable than on Friday, resulting again in a large number of laps completed around the Silverstone circuit.

Most drivers worked through more tyre evaluations as their behaviour is likely different that during yesterday's cooler cooler conditions. Still, despite more reasonable temperatures, several drivers, most notably both men at Ferrari had difficulty finding more speed out of the medium as they both proved quite pacey on the harder compound.

Mercedes on the other hand was clearly faster on the medium, setting the fastest two times in the closing seconds of the session on this tyre. Vettel and Webber are 4 tenths off of the Mercedes AMG cars.

The most notable incident during FP3 however was Sergio Pérez' tyre failure. Somewhere halfway through Copse, the left rear tyre sort of exploded on the McLaren, throwing pieces of rubber all over the track. A short red flag period was introduced to clean up the mess, and by the time Pérez returned to the pits, only the outer tyre wall was still on the rim, all the rest was still out on track in hundreds of different pieces.

The worrying bit here is that this are the Pirelli tyres that feature the new bonding glue. While the tyres previously delaminated, it seems there is now another issue popping up for the Italian tyre manufacturer.