Valtteri Bottas set the fastest time in free practice on Saturday morning, with Lewis Hamilton just behind him as Mercedes topped a session for the first time this weekend.

Soft tyres was the tire of the session as majority of the driver bolted the soft compound on to set decent lap time. The temperatures not quite as aggressive as in Friday’s practice runs, which is why the tyres had a little more longevity and drivers were eager to push to find their limit ahead of qualifying later this afternoon as seen with the Mercedes drivers doing couple of push laps on same soft tire.

Bottas, the 2019 pole position sitter with time of 1m25.093s is already very close to beating his own time record as he set the fastest time 1m25.873s with under 15 minutes remaining. Hamilton briefly led the session but ended up 0.138s slower than the Finn in P2.

Red Bull’s Max Verstappen in third place, was – 0.300s off the lead. his team mate Alex Albon spent most of the session in the garage with an electrical issue on his car. He got on the track few minutes to the end of the session, but his struggles continued as his first flying lap time was deleted after running wide at turn 4. Albon finish 13th overall.

The Racing Points were not really impressive until Stroll made a late push to P4, 0.703s off Bottas, while Sergio Perez's stand-in Nico Hulkenberg was 0.999s off the lead in P9.

P5 went to Carlos Sainz, with his McLaren team mate Lando Norris in P7. Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc split the McLarens to round out the top six, 0.898s off the fastest Mercedes.

Sebastian Vettel didn’t have a good start to Saturday as the four-time world champion had another difficult morning after missing out FP1 on Friday before brake pedal problems hit in FP2. those brake issues appears to be affecting Sebastian still, as he was heard on the radio several times, thereby forcing him to settle for P14 ahead of Romain Grosjean.

Daniel Ricciardo was eighth in the session, his Renault team having broken the curfew overnight to replace his chassis after they found a hairline crack in it on Friday night. Esteban Ocon was 13th quickest.

Williams' George Russell dropped down to 16th as Grosjean and Albon improved their lap time late on, and at the back was his team mate Nicholas Latifi, just behind Alfa Romeo's Kimi Raikkonen who was impeded by the slow moving Antonio Giovinazzi on one of his final flying laps.

The clouds are also looming over Silverstone with qualifying set to get underway at 1400 local time. Will we see rain fall in the session this afternoon?

See the full time sheet for FP3 below.

FORMULA 1 PIRELLI BRITISH GRAND PRIX 2020 - PRACTICE 3

01 Aug 2020

Silverstone Circuit, Silverstone