Vettel fastest in Austria FP3

Sebastian Vettel has ended the third practice session for the Austrian Grand Prix at the head of the field, with a best lap time of 1:05.092. The German was just 0.269s ahead of his title rival, Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton, who held onto second despite a brake failure late in the session. Trailing the Briton was the other Silver Arrow of Valtteri Bottas, whose best time was almost half a second slower than Vettel.

"It's a concern, but thank God it happened now because it means we can change the disc," Niki Lauda said to Sky F1 about Hamilton's brake issues. "We need to find out why the disc failed. Hopefully we can go into a qualifying with a fit car. He had no warning at all. We checked the data. We have to analyse it and see what happened."

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Vettel's team-mate Kimi Raikkonen found himself in fourth, with the two Red Bulls of Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo significantly behind their rivals in fifth and sixth on the team's home turf.

The two Haas cars put in a good showing, with Kevin Magnussen carrying his excellent Baku form over to Spielberg - he had the seventh fastest time, just ahead of Romain Grosjean in eighth. The Toro Rosso duo of Daniil Kvyat and Carlos Sainz rounded out the top ten; the latter's result came in spite of an earlier engine problem that forced the STR12 to be reset.

HAM is back in the garage

Could be a problem with the brakes? ?#AustrianGP ?? #F1 #FP3 pic.twitter.com/27Boy41N2K
— Formula 1 (@F1) July 8, 2017

Force India's Esteban Ocon led the lower half of the pack in eleventh, and he was followed by Nico Hulkenberg's Renault, Stoffel Vandoorne's McLaren and Hulkenberg's team-mate Jolyon Palmer, who had been the faster Renault earlier in the session despite lost track time on Friday.

Fernando Alonso suffered due to more Honda power unit problems and was fifteenth, whilst Lance Stroll and Felipe Massa found themselves nearly two seconds off the pace in their Williams cars - they were sixteenth and seventeenth respectively.

The field was rounded out by the second Force India of Sergio Perez and the two Saubers, with Marcus Ericsson beating Pascal Wehrlein. Qualifying is set to get underway at 14:00 local time.

Mason Hawker

F1Grand Prix Austria - Free practice 3