Russell beats Antonelli to top spot in final practice

Mercedes driver George Russell has denied his team-mate and Formula 1 championship leader Kimi Antonelli a clean sweep of Austrian Grand Prix practice sessions, with the British driver pipping the Italian in final practice, as Lewis Hamilton impressed for Ferrari.

Mercedes was handed its first grand prix defeat of 2026 by Hamilton and Ferrari in Barcelona, while McLaren looked like it could pose the strongest challenge to the Silver Arrows at a hot Red Bull Ring on Friday. But on Saturday afternoon’s final practice ahead of qualifying, Mercedes showed few signs of its one-lap advantage disappearing as Russell pipped Antonelli in the final minutes of practice.

After a sluggish start to the session in the oppressive Styrian heat, with temperatures again easily clearing 30C, reigning world champion Lando Norris got the qualifying sims under way with a 1m07.832s effort after 15 minutes. That was comfortably quickest at that stage, with Hamilton and Russell both unable to touch Norris’ benchmark early on.

Norris’ McLaren team-mate fared better, just half a tenth off the Briton until championship leader Antonelli put Mercedes on top with a 1m07.533s lap, with Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc demoting Russell to go second, just 0.155s off Antonelli’s benchmark.

Max Verstappen had gone fourth in the heavily upgraded Red Bull RB22, which meant the top four teams were all covered by just over three tenths at the halfway mark of the session, with just the second Red Bull of Isack Hadjar missing from that top eight battle.

Russell improved to get within 0.017s of Antonelli, offering a brief glimpse of a tight intra-Mercedes battle later on, until Antonelli retaliated with a huge 1m07.134s lap to put more daylight in between the pair. In fairness to Russell, he reported “really bad straight-line braking on the front axle” into Turn 3, which exaggerated the gap with the Italian teenager.

Heading into the last round of qualifying sims in the final 15 minutes, Antonelli couldn’t improve on his chart-topping time, which left the door open for Hamilton to take second just 0.077s in arrears, ahead of a sliding Russell, Norris and Verstappen. Leclerc was missing from that battle after locking up the fronts at Turn 3, aborting his first flyer and then not improving on his damaged tyres.

In the dying minutes of the session Russell finally set a 1m17.096s to go top, 0.038s ahead of Antonelli to which the Italian was unable to respond, peeling into the pitlane after shipping time in the first two sectors.

Hamilton took third with a 1m07.211s, just over a tenth behind, to set up an intriguing qualifying session. McLaren didn’t look as strong as it did on Friday, as Piastri and Norris settled for fourth and fifth, just under three tenths adrift, and narrowly holding off sixth-placed Verstappen.

While Hamilton managed to make significant improvements after Ferrari was left wanting for grip on Friday, Leclerc fared little better as he was down in seventh, 0.356s off Russell.

There was a huge, half-second gap to eighth-placed Hadjar, who complained of a tough-to-drive Red Bull as he locked up repeatedly in Turns 1 and 3.

In the midfield battle, Racing Bulls cut an impressive figure with Liam Lawson and Arvid Lindblad both making it into the top 10. The pair is going into qualifying with a slight edge on Alpine’s Pierre Gasly, while Audi also looks like a points contender.

At the bottom of the order there were no miracles for Aston Martin, as Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll propped up the timesheets well behind Haas, Williams and Cadillac.

F1 Austrian GP – FP3 results

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– The Autosport.com Team