Kimi Antonelli concluded the final Formula 1 practice session at the Belgian Grand Prix on top, as Lewis Hamilton crashed at the end of the session.
Antonelli had set a 1m45.990s with his opening soft-tyre run of the session, laying down the gauntlet for his challengers at the end of the first 30 minutes of the session – but it proved too difficult to beat.
Hamilton attempted to get closer to Antonelli’s effort with his final soft-tyre lap of the session, but produced a near carbon-copy of Pierre Gasly’s accident in FP2; the Ferrari driver carried too much speed through the second part of Les Fagnes and went wide into the gravel, clipping the wall with his rear-right tyre to rip his wheel out of alignment.
It gives Ferrari a considerable amount of work to do ahead of qualifying to repair the damage, depending on the extent of the damage to his gearbox.
After sparse running across the opening 10 minutes of the session given the limited quantity of tyres available, the Spa-Francorchamps circuit soon became a touch livelier. With his first run on the soft tyres, Hamilton was first to break below the 1m47s mark with his 1m46.789s lap – his second run on the same set of soft tyres.
Max Verstappen and George Russell were not able to beat this on their first efforts on the soft tyre, but Antonelli could; the Italian rifled across the line with this 1m45.990s to sit a mammoth eight tenths clear of Hamilton. Verstappen, meanwhile, had found time with his second lap – but fell just half a tenth shy of Hamilton’s effort.
Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari
Photo by: Marc Fleury
On a second set of tyres, Verstappen uncovered much of the time back over Antonelli and soaked up a slipstream from Valtteri Bottas’ Cadillac in the final sector – but still fell 0.148s shy at the line of the Italian’s benchmark. This was subsequently beaten by Lando Norris by 0.009s, a late first effort on softs having spent most of the session producing a long run on the medium compound.
Antonelli did not improve on his second effort with new softs; he aborted the first run after going wide at La Source, traced to his inability to get the final gear in early enough to benefit from a final burst of engine braking. On the follow-up, he was over a quarter of a second down on his best – but this was deleted for track limits in any case.
Thus, Norris and Verstappen slotted into second and third on the timing boards. Russell had got up to fourth with his second set of tyres, and then backed off on a second run after encountering Sergio Perez through Raidillon. Leclerc endured a similar fate on a new set of softs, this time finding a slow Pierre Gasly at Turn 9, but moved up to sixth – one position below Hamilton – on the follow-up effort.
Oscar Piastri once again trailed Norris and was seventh overall, half a second down on his team-mate. Both Audis found their way into the top 10, Nico Hulkenberg eighth from Gabriel Bortoleto, while Isack Hadjar was 10th overall.
Hadjar overcame a stop and a stall in the pitlane, but his Red Bull was recovered by his mechanics and he was able to continue with the session. The Frenchman reported struggles with an inability to get heat into his tyres, particularly at the front axle. He ended the session just 0.08s clear of Arvid Lindblad, who was ahead of Liam Lawson.
F1 Belgian GP – FP3 results
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– The Autosport.com Team
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