Valtteri Bottas made it a clean sweep of practice sessions as he set the fastest time again in FP3 at the Portuguese Grand Prix.
After running on Friday afternoon was heavily compromised by two red flags, it was thought teams might run a little more to gather some more data.
Indeed, in the first half-hour of running, some did focus primarily on the medium tyre on higher fuel.
Mercedes though wasted little time in focusing on qualifying runs, as Hamilton set the early pace by dipping into the 1m16s on the soft compound tyre.
Red Bull later upped the pace with Verstappen briefly going fastest on mediums before his time was deleted for exceeding track limits, the Dutchman would then improve to P2 on his next lap.
On a new set of softs, Bottas would post the best time of the session, a 1m16.654s, to pip Hamilton by 0.026s.
After that, however, drivers struggled to find time, as Red Bull couldn’t improve on their earlier medium tyre bests using the supposedly faster soft compound.
The result was a somewhat mixed up final order with Pierre Gasly finding himself between Verstappen and Alex Albon in fourth for AlphaTauri.
Charles Leclerc was one of several drivers to have a spin as grip still proved hard to find around Portimao, but the Monegasque would still end the session sixth.
This as Ferrari appears to have joined the battle between McLaren, Racing Point and Renault for ‘best of the rest’ behind Mercedes and Red Bull.
Sebastian Vettel, who ended FP3 11th, would cause a late red flag after running over a loose drain cover at the penultimate corner.
Kimi Raikkonen continued to look competitive in 13th for Alfa Romeo.
Out of position, certainly compared to recent races, however, was Daniel Ricciardo in 14th for Renault, as the high downforce nature of Portimao perhaps highlights the weakness of the RS20.
Amid the speculation over his future at Williams, George Russell looks in the fight for another Q2 appearance in 15th, beating Lance Stroll in the Racing Point.
At the back were the usual names, with Antonio Giovinazzi leading the two Haas cars and Nicholas Latifi.
Another session then with few answers as to the competitive order, but it sets up a qualifying hour that certainly looks set to throw a few surprises.
Full results from FP3 can be seen below:
