World Champion Lewis Hamilton set the fastest time in final practice ahead of qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix with teammate Nico Rosberg half a second adrift.
After a lack of long runs in second practice, the final session saw Red Bull and Toro Rosso focus on heavy fuel stints on the soft tyre to evaluate their race pace whilst the other teams undertook their usual Saturday practice programme.
Early on, Hamilton led the session with a 1m50.635 after a four-lap run on the Medium tyre just 0.045s ahead of Ricciardo who only completed a one lap stint on the same tyre. Ricciardo and Verstappen were the first drivers to put on soft tyres just over 20 minutes into the hour and the former took to the top of the timesheets with a 1m49.930 and Verstappen lapped 0.669s slower on the yellow marked Pirellis.
The session was mainly incident free in comparison to second practice yesterday. The only incidents saw drivers running wide at the final chicane as a result of a mild tailwind on the approach causing several drivers to miss the apex of the chicane. Raikkonen ran wide and into the gravel at turn 13 but managed to avoid any contact with the barriers.
With 12 minutes to go, the Mercedes put on the soft tyres for qualifying simulation laps and Rosberg was first to set his time and went quicker than Ricciardo with a 1m49.482 but behind him Championship Leader Lewis Hamilton was on a much better lap and set a stunning 1m48.984 to go fastest of all. The main difference between the title protagonists was in the middle sector as Rosberg appeared to suffer from understeer in the medium speed corners.
Sebastian Vettel lapped six-tenths slower than the Mercedes despite a fastest first and third sector with teammate Raikkonen a further tenth adrift. Force India’s Sergio Perez showed some impressive speed just 0.002 behind the Finn in fifth place. Both Red Bull’s set their fastest laps midway through the session as the team focussed on heavy fuel runs on the softer tyre but ended the session in sixth and seventh just under one second slower than Mercedes. Worryingly, Williams only managed ninth and tenth but may not have been entirely light on fuel and will be interesting to see if they close the gap to rivals Ferrari come qualifying.
McLaren’s issues continued once again with Alonso having to pit after just one installation lap whilst the team investigated a broken exhaust problem and didn’t manage to complete a timed lap. Jenson Button didn’t have any major problems but his fastest time of a 1m51.981 on the soft tyre was three seconds away from Mercedes’ pace.
Going into qualifying, Mercedes are favourites for another front-row lockout but the battle will be close between Ferrari, Force India, Red Bull and Williams for the positions behind them.
