Under brighter and slightly warmer conditions compared to Friday, Verstappen lined up first at the end of the pitlane and led off on a long first stint on the mediums, which meant he set the first place benchmark at 1m30.265s, but was soon supplanted by the soft-shod Hamilton.
The Mercedes driver’s 1m30.065s first flier remained the top spot throughout the first third of the one-hour session, which featured Kevin Magnussen going off into the gravel at the hairpin and Daniel Ricciardo spinning at Turn 2.
To make up for the FP2 washout on Friday, the teams then spent the middle part of the session completing long-run data-gathering stints nearly five seconds off the leading pace.
This meant Hamilton’s early flier continued as the benchmark way past the halfway point, with his team-mate Russell book-ending the standings at this stage for Mercedes, with the younger Briton having started FP3 with a long run immediately, using the medium tyres.
Red Bull and Ferrari also spent the middle phase of the session assessing the durability of the yellow-walled tyres, while Mercedes and McLaren had Hamilton and Oscar Piastri respectively do their higher fuel running on the softs.
Aston Martin went alone in using hard tyres aboard the AMR23s – Fernando Alonso’s finally running the updated sidepods that had been on Lance Stroll’s car only on Friday.
In the other McLaren, Lando Norris eschewed a similar run plan – instead making set-up alterations in the pits and then attempting a further flier to the one that had put him third in the early stages on used tyres.
Source: Autosport