Lewis Hamilton set the fastest time for the 3rd Free Practice session for the British Grand Prix with Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel just 0.032s slower.

The session got underway under cloudy and windy conditions with and 80% chance of rain forecast for the session. Drivers were out setting times quite early in the session before the rain. The rain did eventually start falling with about 17mins left in the session.

Hamilton’s time of 1:28.063 on the super softs gave him the top spot. Behind him Valtteri Bottas crossed the line just 0.074s slower than Hamilton in 1:28.137. Vettel was on a very quick lap behind the Mercedes pair and set the fastest 1st and 2nd sectors to go on and split the Mercedes drivers finishing just 0.032s off Hamilton’s benchmark. Vettel’s best time of 1:28.095, split the Mercedes and gave him the 2nd fastest spot of the session.

Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen finished 4th fastest more than half a second off the pace ahead of Renault’s Nico Hulkenberg in 5th.

Red Bull were slightly caught out by the rain later in the session with Max Verstappen but Daniel Ricciardo was able to set a time on the super softs to place him 6th fastest. Verstappen caught the rain on his flying lap on the super softs and went off at Turn 6 bringing out the yellow flags. His time of 1:29.904 was set on the soft tyres and earned him 8th place.

Splitting the Red Bulls was Haas’ Romain Grosjean in 7th.

Rounding out the top 10 was Felipe Massa in the Williams and Stoffel Vandoorne in the McLaren. Vandoorne this time just edging out Alonso for the top 10 spot.

The rain that started falling in the last 17mins of FP3 is forecast to stop well before qualifying. We are expecting a dry track for qualifying but we just may see things mixed up with the rain.

PROVISIONAL CLASSIFICATION (END OF FP3): 👀 Tight between the top three #BritishGP 🇬🇧 #F1 pic.twitter.com/HrEHQuiHQn

— Formula 1 (@F1) July 15, 2017