When the session started, the pack was in no great hurry to hit the track, and Fernando Alonso eventually showed up for a solo run on the medium-sized tires towards the end of the first 10 minutes.
Alonso therefore set the P1 benchmark at 1: 21.020 minutes, which remained the fastest until Sergio Perez joined the Alpine rider towards the end of the first quarter of the session.
Perez set his Red Bull fastest with 1: 20.388 minutes on the middle tire before the rest of the field poured onto the soft tires and a flood of faster times was achieved.
Kimi Raikkonen drove the first run on soft tires and moved up to P1 with 1: 19.732 minutes, but a few seconds later his Alfa Romeo team-mate Antonio Giovinazzi was ahead with 1: 19.368 minutes.
Charles Leclerc then put his Ferrari in first place with a time of 1: 18.997 minutes – a time he beat after a slower charge lap to bring the peak time down to 1: 18.882 seconds.
At this point, after almost 25 minutes of FP3, the Mercedes cars and Max Verstappen appeared for the first time – with the Black Arrows drivers sent straight to Softs while the Red Bull appeared on the medium for an opening run.
Bottas ran ahead of Hamilton and used his first flying lap to take first place with 1: 18.423 minutes, which the world champion surpassed in his first run – a 1: 18.304 minute.
Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes W12
Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images
Hamilton continued his run with his first set of softs and shortly after halfway through the session he improved again to improve the fastest time to 1: 18.117 minutes.
In third place before the last few runs, Verstappen’s fastest time on the medium was 0.513 seconds slower than Hamilton, but of course it was put on the harder tire.
The Dutchman once noted that the Mercedes that followed him through the lap was “incredible” in the final sector – the key to a fast lap time in Barcelona given its slow, technical corners where remaining tire life is critical.
Mercedes sent their cars off for another run on the softs after 45 minutes, but none initially improved – although Hamilton appeared to be faster on his first lap on his latest set of softs before losing time in the final sector and missing the apex the newly profiled curve 10 long to the left and then hit the curbs hard to leave the last chicane before the last curve.
Hamilton and Bottas continued their run, with the latter’s best mid-session lap being his best as he, too, lost time in the final sector as he long over the curbs before the final corner as he improved wanted.
Despite the long run, the world champion finally found time and set the fastest time of 1: 18.070 minutes with just under 10 minutes to go.
But in Hamilton’s entourage came Verstappen, who was only put on the softs in the last few runs of the session.
He posted the fastest time of all in the middle sector, over 0.4s ahead of two-thirds of the lap, but the fact that he caught an oversteer snap as he exited the final chicane cost him a bit of time.
Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB16B, Nikita Mazepin, Haas VF-21
Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
But Verstappen still drove the fastest – with a time of 1: 17.835 minutes to throw Red Bull straight into the battle for pole later on Saturday after making mistakes on his best chance to set fast laps in FP1 and FP2 .
Verstappen was 0.235 seconds ahead of Hamilton, and Bottas was unable to improve on his final run, which meant he was late finals on the softs from Ferrari pair Leclerc and Carlos Sainz Jr.
Lando Norris ended up finishing sixth fastest but had a worrying moment at the end of the session when he shot into the gravel behind Turn 10 when the rear of his McLaren broke out of shape as he reached the apex in the left turn right, which means that he drove head-on into the gravel.
Unlike Robert Kubica in FP1 for Alfa Romeo, Norris was able to take enough momentum to slowly hobble out of the gravel and return to the pits.
Pierre Gasly finished seventh for AlphaTauri, ahead of Daniel Ricciardo and Raikkonen, who also had late drama when he suffered a puncture shortly before the last 10 minutes – possibly after he hit the curbs on the right while driving through the uphill corner 8 had met.
Perez completed the top 10 in the second Red Bull, 0.7 seconds slower than Verstappen.
Spanish F1 Grand Prix – FP3 Results
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