Ferrari brought the fight to Mercedes in the final free practice session ahead of the Austrian Grand Prix.
Sebastian Vettel topped the session, but ended the morning just 0.029s faster than Lewis Hamilton.
It was Vettel’s team-mate Kimi Raikkonen setting the pace early in the session and, though he was initially knocked down the order by Vettel and the Mercedes duo, he managed to find enough pace to return to the top spot just after the session mid-point.
More improvements came in the second half of the session, knocking Raikkonen back to fourth, just 0.4s slower than Vettel’s final time.
Vettel’s best time, an overall track record at 1m04.070s, came in the final 15 minutes of the hour session. Hamilton set his best time of the day just moments later, but couldn’t quite match the Ferrari.
Valtteri Bottas finished third.
Red Bull ran into problems late in the session. Max Verstappen had set the fifth fastest time of the morning before his car shut down with a suspected electrical problem in the final 10 minutes of the session.
Just before the end of the session, Charles Leclerc came to a stop on track. The Sauber had just left the pits when he became stuck in fifth gear. He’d managed the 10th fastest time.
Kerbs continued to be a problem for Toro Rosso and McLaren, with Brendon Hartley and Stoffel Vandoorne suffering front-wing damage after running over the kerbs.
Pierre Gasly also ran into problems early in the session when he was told to back off and return to the pits without using his throttle. He managed to head back out to finish the morning 12th overall.
At the front of the order, Daniel Ricciardo managed to trouble free session to go sixth quickest, ahead of best of the rest Haas, with Romain Grosjean P7 and Kevin Magnussen eighth.
Carlos Sainz took ninth, with team-mate Nico Hulkenberg 11th.
Esteban Ocon, Fernando Alonso, and Sergio Perez took 13th through to 15th.
At the bottom of the order, Marcus Ericsson finished ahead of Hartley, Vandoorne, Lance Stroll, and Sergey Sirotkin.
