Hungaroring, FP3: Hamilton heads final practice in Hungary

Three-in-a-row for Hamilton as Rosberg cuts the gap

Lewis Hamilton made it a clean sweep of fastest times in practice for the Hungarian Grand Prix, the Mercedes driver repeating his Friday dominance with the quickest lap of this morning’s third and final practice session at the Hungaroring.

The championship leader was pushed hard by team-mate Nico Rosberg, however, and in the end Hamilton had just 0.098s in hand over the German at the top of the timesheet. Third quickest in the run-up to this afternoon’s qualifying session was Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel, with Red Bull Racing’s Daniil Kvyat repeating his team’s good form on Friday by taking fourth place.

The session began in traditional fashion with the field taking to the track on the prime medium compound Pirelli tyres. Among the first to run were Force India’s Sergio Perez and Nico Hulkenberg as the team tried to make up the time lost when it opted to sit out FP2 following Perez’s rear suspension failure and heavy crash in the first practice.

With Friday frontrunners, Mercedes and Red Bull, holding station in their garages, the early pace was set by Ferrari’s Kimi Räikkönen and Sebastian Vettel, with Toro Rosso’s Max Verstappen third ahead of the Lotus cars of Pastor Maldonado and Romain Grosjean.

After 20 minutes Rosberg was the first Mercedes driver to take to take to the circuit, on the medium tyres, and he immediately jumped to the top of the order with a lap of 1:25.201 that put him four tenths clear of the Ferraris.

Having missed out on a soft-tyre qualifying simulation on Friday afternoon, Hulkenberg and Perez were unsurprisingly the first to bolt on the option tyre and after Perez had jumped to second with his first lap on the soft, Hulkenberg vaulted to P1 with a lap of 1:24.483, almost four tenths up on Rosberg’s benchmark. Hamilton then made his first appearance and slotted into second place on the medium tyre.

McLaren too moved to the soft tyre earlier than their bulk of the field and Fernando Alonso’s soft-tyre lap put him third – 0.3s adrift of Hulkenberg’s P1 effort – and marginalyy slower than Hamilton’s medium tyre lap. Jenson Button then took fifth behind Rosberg.

The German Mercedes driver was the first of the top team drivers to take on the soft tyre and he immediately moved to the front of the pack with a lap of 1:23.095 that puts him 1.3s clear of Hulkenberg.

Rosberg was followed by Hamilton whose first soft-tyre attempt was 0.098s quicker than that of his team-mate. Toro Rosso’s Carlos Sainz then jumped into third place with his qualifying sim, 1.3s off Hamilton’s pace.

Sainz was soon dislodged, however, as Vettel completed his first soft-tyre lap to take third with a time 0.889 off Hamilton’s. The Toro Rosso driver was then dropped to fifth as Red Bull Racing’s Kvyat made a last-minute improvement to set a time of 1:24.215, which was 1.218 off the P1 time.

With Sainz fifth, sixth place went to Hulkenberg thanks to his early effort on soft tyres. The Force India driver was followed by Verstappen, Alonso, the second Red Bull of Daniel Ricciardo and tenth-placed Romain Grosjean.