FP3: Bottas tops Hamilton as Mercedes up the pace

F1 Grand Prix, GP France, Circuit Paul Ricard

Mercedes continued on from Friday's pace setting performances as Valtteri Bottas headed Lewis Hamilton for another Silver Arrow one-two in final practice before French GP qualifying.

While everybody has worked overnight to improve their cars, so did Mercedes, and their advantage to the competition hadn't reduced at all. Ferrari did show signs of improvement, and if their drivers could string their best sectors together, they could be in the fight, but in this practice session, their best times were 4 tenths off of the Mercedes duo.

Both Mercedes drivers were tightly matched. Bottas fastest lap came from his first attempt in the second half of the session, with a mistake on his second attempt on that same tyre set denying him of a possible improvement. For Hamilton, it was the other way around, with the Briton only managing to get close to Bottas on his second attempt, after doing a cool down lap on the back of an imperfect first flyer.

Behind 4th, the gap to 5th was surprisingly big as Verstappen seemed unable to match the pace of the top 4. In fact, his best lap was nearly 1.4s slower than Bottas' best effort, and just a sigh quicker than team mate Gasly and McLaren's Lando Norris.

Daniel Ricciardo, powered by a B-spec Renault engine - contrary to Hulkenberg, who still used the previous specification - ended up 8th, followed by the second McLaren of Carlos Sainz and Kimi Raikkonen, who completed the top 10 for Alfa Romeo.

At the back, George Russel was slowest of all as he hit technical trouble in his Williams. Having just managed 4 laps, the team decided to replace his car's battery pack to resolve some issues.