Only moments before, Verstappen had pipped Carlos Sainz by 0.057s as the Ferrari driver spent much of the hour on top owing to his performance on the medium tyre earlier on in the session.
An interesting thread within FP3 concerned the rapid degradation of the soft tyres over a single lap, and impressive first sectors for those trying the red-walled C5 often were unable to retain that level of performance throughout the final two splits.
