Nico Rosberg narrowly beat Max Verstappen to the fastest time in the third and final practice session for the Hungarian Grand Prix.
The Mercedes driver put in a 1m20.261 on the super-soft tyre in the final part of the 60-minute morning session to go quickest.
But an improvement from Red Bull’s Verstappen a few minutes later almost saw Rosberg lose his stop at the top of the timesheets. Verstappen went just 0.002 seconds slower and had to settle for the runner-up position in FP3.
His team-mate Daniel Ricciardo backed up Red Bull’s encouraging pace in third, with Lewis Hamilton running wide on his best lap and going fourth, completing 23 laps and bouncing back from his FP2 crash on Friday.
Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel were fifth and sixth, with Fernando Alonso seventh for McLaren. Valtteri Bottas was eighth, with his upgraded Williams FW38, while Sergio Perez and Jolyon Palmer completed the top 10.
Felipe Massa and Kevin Magnussen were next up, with the latter also showing improved form for Renault. Jenson Button and Esteban Gutierrez were 13th and 14th respectively.
Romain Grosjean and Carlos Sainz Jr. followed on the timesheets, with Nico Hulkenberg down in 17th – he suffered a close call with Magnussen late on, radioing his team in frustration.
There were several off-track excursions as drivers got to grips with the new track surface, while they remained wary of the sensors on the exits of Turn 4 and Turn 11.
The FIA will have a zero tolerance policy to drivers running wide and gaining an advantage at those corners in qualifying and the race.
Daniil Kvyat, Felipe Nasr, Marcus Ericsson, Pascal Wehrlein and Rio Haryanto completed the runners in final practice.
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