FP3: Norris tops the timesheets ahead of Piastri and Verstappen during final practice in Austria

Lando Norris set the pace ahead of Oscar Piastri and Max Verstappen in the final practice hour of the Austrian Grand Prix, setting the scene for an unpredictable Qualifying session as many struggled to stick to the track limits.

After Friday’s running, which saw McLaren establish themselves as the team to beat with their latest upgrades, the drivers returned to the track with the ambition of fine-tuning their cars ahead of Qualifying later today.

Red Bull’s Verstappen, who is working with a different race engineer this weekend, was among the first to head out for a fast lap – bolting on a set of hard compound tyres, he clocked a 1m 6.131s on his initial effort, substantially slower than Norris’ benchmark time of 1m 4.580s from FP2.

The Dutchman momentarily went wide at the final corner, subsequently reporting over the radio that “the car is a bit nervous getting back on throttle”, adding that the Red Bull felt “a bit snappy” as he attempted to cut down his times.

More and more cars gradually joined Verstappen on the circuit and Norris bettered his rival’s lap by 0.156s, albeit on the soft tyres. Elsewhere, Turn 1 produced a series of overcorrections as the Briton, Franco Colapinto and both Ferraris were forced to take to the run-off area and abort their flying laps after driving wide.

Approaching the halfway point, everyone had made an appearance on the timesheets, but it was Norris who remained firmly at the top with a gap of around four-tenths back to his compatriots in Lewis Hamilton and George Russell.

In an attempt to close the deficit to his papaya team mate, Piastri pushed a little too hard and rattled over the gravel at Turn 9, narrowly hanging on to avoid a more damaging incident. He quickly advised his side of the garage to check the floor and remained over 0.5s behind Norris with 20 minutes to go.

Racing Bulls' Isack Hadjar suffered another near-miss at the following corner as he similarly dropped a wheel into the gravel, which sent him into a spin and brought out the yellow flags momentarily. It was one of the more satisfying errors of the session – he ended up facing the right way on the track and uttered a sheepish “sorry!” to his engineer.

Norris abandoned a lap despite setting the fastest first sector of the hour as he drifted wide over a kerb, but he nevertheless finished the session on top with a time of 1m 4.324s, leading a McLaren 1-2 with Piastri just over a tenth behind.

Verstappen replicated Hadjar’s spin late on but slotted into third place, beating the Ferrari duo of Leclerc and Hamilton. The two Mercedes were separated by just 0.035s with Russell marginally ahead, while an in-form Lance Stroll, Yuki Tsunoda and Gabriel Bortoleto rounded out the top 10.

The second Aston Martin of Fernando Alonso was 12th, just behind Liam Lawson, who managed to set a time identical to Bortoleto’s. Nico Hulkenberg took P13 ahead of the Williams pair of Alex Albon and Sainz, with Haas’ Ollie Bearman settling for P16.

At the tail end of the order, Pierre Gasly, Esteban Ocon, Hadjar and Colapinto will all be hoping to reset and better their times ahead of the Qualifying hour at 1600 local time.