This session has finished. No further updates will be posted.
Final practice is done and McLaren are still the only team to have lapped in less than 1’13. But Russell and Vertappen did not improve their lap times from second practice in that session. Here’s the report and all the times.
Hamilton’s car does appear to be changing up gears now.
Hamilton reports he’s stuck in gear. He doesn’t seem to be able to get out of first.
Verstappen starts a lap with a minute and a half to go. He’s four tenths of a second off Piastri in the first sector, loses almost half a second in the next and crosses the line 1.2s down. His best lap was within a second of it.
Hamilton can’t get anywhere nears Piastri’s pace. He does a 1’13.527 which leaves him 1.1 seconds off the McLaren.
After he went off at turn nine, Norris’s race engineer Will Joseph told him the car’s floor appeared to have touched the ground in the corner, which could have caused a sudden loss of downforce. They brought him into the pits to raise the rear of the car.
Norris improves to a 1’12.913 but Piastri produces a very clean lap and goes over half a second ahead of his team mate.
A fine lap from Alonso in the Aston Martin, fastest of all in the last two sectors, puts him third, 0.039s off Verstappen.
Tsunoda has moved up to seventh but he’s still over half a second off Verstappen.
Norris goes dramatically wide at turn nine and joins the old loop of track which hasn’t been used since 1994.
Verstappen has switched to the softs as well and he hits the top with a 1’13.375, that puts him just two hundredths of a second ahead of Russell.
Norris making an early start on his final flying run? He’s joined the track on the softs.
Andrea Kimi Antonelli is the final driver to start a lap. Using the softs, he goes second behind his team mate but four tenths of a second slower.
Leclerc improves slightly on softs but is still almost half a second off Russell.
Underlining that point, Norris goes fastest by seven hundredths of a second on mediums, then Russell beats that by almost half a second on softs. Verstappen up to sixth on mediums.
A curious lap from Lewis Hamilton now who goes second fastest, a tenth of a second slower than his team mate, but on the harder medium tyre compound. Ferrari now the fastest on the two softest compounds, but the picture is changing quickly.
Charles Leclerc gets down to a 1’13.941. Oscar Piastri does the best time so far on mediums which leaves him just over half a second off the Ferrari in third place.
Lando Norris does the fastest middle sector and beats Tsunoda by three-tenths of a second. But Carlos Sainz Jnr takes over at the top of the times using softs to set a 1’14.124.
Tsunoda, who looked thoroughly unhappy yesterday, goes top with a 1’14.851 on mediums. “I keep sliding a lot,” he says, sounding much the same as he did 24 hours ago.
The track is getting busier now. Lando Norris and Yuki Tsunoda among those lapping.
Only Bortoleto running now – Aston Martin have done their usual tyre preparation laps. The track is a toasty 44C, air temperature 29C.
Colapinto gets the ball rolling with a 1’15.224 on mediums.
Gabriel Bortoleto and the Aston Martin drivers join him on track. The performance of the AMR25s will be particularly interesting following their upgrade at Imola.
The final hour of practice has begun and the first driver on-track is the one who was slowest in both sessions yesterday: Franco Colapinto.
As it stands, all teams have a single set of hards left, but the Mercedes and Williams drivers are down to their last set of mediums each. Every other driver still has two sets of mediums left, and the upcoming session will indicate whether they are likely to converge before the race. We did see a mixture of softs, mediums and hards used last year.
Mercedes’ position in the ranking yesterday was interesting. George Russell was second fastest and he did it using only a single set of soft tyres. He (and team mate Andrea Kimi Antonelli) therefore have seven sets left for the rest of the weekend while McLaren, Red Bull and Ferrari drivers have six.
McLaren were fastest on Friday, Oscar Piastri setting a quickest lap of 1’12.760. However they’re tended to be the team to beat on Fridays, that hasn’t always been the case on Saturdays.
Third practice for the 2025 Spanish Grand Prix is coming up next.
