Hamilton tops final practice

Lewis Hamilton struck back against Nico Rosberg’s Friday form, topping the final practice session before qualifying, with a 1:48.984. The current World Champion was almost half a second ahead of his team mate, although Rosberg’s qualifying lap wasn’t as clean as he would have hoped.

Ferrari showed more of the form we were expecting, with Sebastian Vettel 3rd and Kimi Raikkonen 4th. Raikkonen had a minor excursion early in the session as he ran through the gravel on the exit of the Fanges chicane, but also caused a scare for Romain Grosjean as he was moving slowly on the racing line as the Frenchman was fast approaching on the exit of Stavelot, with the two very nearly making contact.

It is difficult to read into the final classification of the session, however. An interrupted FP2 meant the teams did not do the long runs they wanted, so we saw many different programmes for the final practice session to get both the race and qualifying runs in.

Red Bull did their qualifying runs earlier in the session than most, and continued to show strong form in the high-downforce middle sector. Daniel Ricciardo was 6th with Daniil Kvyat 7th. They were running closely with Force India, who began to show an increase in pace with Sergio Perez 5th and Nico Hulkenberg 8th. The four drivers were split by less than two tenths of a second.

Although Williams just crept into the top 10 with 9th and 10th, the team have said they are happy with what they did and are confident they can qualifying towards the front.

McLaren’s woes continued, as Fernando Alonso did not complete a lap time after discovering an exhaust gas leak on the installation lap. He remained in the garage for the remainder of the session, and Jenson Button finished just 17th.

The team have brought an extra two new engines, in addition to the two they brought for practice, so as to avoid taking engine penalties later in the season. That means McLaren have racked up 105-place grid penalties between their two drivers.

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