Mercedes kept its nose ahead in the 2018 Formula 1’s French GP’s practice sessions with Valtteri Bottas topping the rain-affected FP3 session on Saturday at Paul Ricard.
After Lewis Hamilton topped the first two sessions of French GP on Friday, Bottas was lucky enough to clock the FP3 session’s best time of 1m33.666s before rain came down to disrupt the running ahead of the qualifying session.
Renault’s Carlos Sainz was second after his time of 1m34.953s with Sauber’s Charles Leclerc (1m35.012s) in third, McLaren’s Fernando Alonso (1m36.365s) fourth and Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel (1m36.756s) completing the Top 5.
The Spaniard was one of the drivers to venture out on full wets. His teammate Stoffel Vandoorne (1m37.547s) also had a wet run to be sixth from Toro Rosso Honda’s Pierre Gasly (1m38.317s) – who as well came out for a lap.
Sauber’s Marcus Ericsson’s (1m38.450s) in eighth had his weekend further complicated after he was forced to miss FP2 due to his FP1 crash with Force India’s Sergio Perez (1m39.641s) in ninth also in a similar boat.
Red Bull Racing’s Daniel Ricciardo (1m39.738s) was 10th sandwiched by the second Force India of Esteban Ocon (1m40.087s) with Hamilton (1m40.743s) and Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen (1m49.711s) only drivers to do a timed lap prior to the rain.
The Williams’ pair of Lance Stroll (2m02.399s) and Sergey Sirotkin (2m04.093s) were 14th and 15th after they set their times under wet conditions with Kevin Magnussen, Brendon Hartley, Romain Grosjean, Nico Hulkenberg and Max Verstappen not doing a timed lap.
Post his engine trouble at the end of the FP2 session on Friday, it was confirmed by Honda that Hartley will have a new PU fitted to his car for the race which means he will start from the back of the grid.
