Horner faces Hamilton with trepidation: "Hard to deal with this afternoon"
- GPblog.com
The third free practice session did not go smoothly for Red Bull Racing. There were some startup problems on the side of Max Verstappen's garage. In the final stages Verstappen was able to put in fast laps, but team boss Christian Horner fears the speed of Lewis Hamilton.
Hamilton set the fastest time in the free practice and was two tenths quicker than his Dutch rival. Valtteri Bottas on P3 came five tenths short of the Red Bull driver. Hamilton therefore seems to have the best cards up his sleeve for this afternoon's qualifying session, but anything can still happen as Red Bull have yet to show the back of their hand.
Over at Sky F1, team principal Horner discusses his team's training session. It was a busy session for the team. They started with some runs with plenty of fuel on board. The programme was completed, but reliability issues emerged again regarding the rear wing. The team is still working on the adjustments to the wing.
Horner fears for fast Hamilton
Horner is confident about Verstappen's race pace, but is worried about Hamilton's fastest lap: "That lap of Hamilton was blistering. It's going to be hard to deal with this afternoon." If Verstappen can't manage to get ahead of Hamilton in qualifying, then the Dutchman will have to pull out all the stops to at least keep Bottas behind him and not lose sight of his rival in the race.