1. Max Verstappen (Red Bull) 1:05.685

2. Oscar Piastri (McLaren) +0.276

3. Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) +0.370

4. Carlos Sainz (Ferrari) +0.443

5. Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) +0.568

6. Esteban Ocon (Alpine) +0.612

7. Lance Stroll (Aston Martin) +0.699

8. George Russell (Mercedes) +0.701

9. Yuki Tsunoda (RB) +0.894

10. Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin) +0.918

We are seeing a great sign that we've got a real battle on our hands between the likes of Max Verstappen and the McLarens.

As we've seen in recent races, there seems like there is nothing in it, but we haven't quite seen the lap time that Lando could've created, but it was mighty close - possibly even quicker than Max could achieve.

Image source, Getty Images

McLaren’s Lando Norris says he is searching for perfection in his quest to consistently beat Red Bull’s Max Verstappen in Formula 1.

Norris has been a close second behind Verstappen in the last two races in Canada and Spain and feels he and McLaren need to tidy up "just tiny things" to beat the world champion.

"Everything needs to be executed perfectly well and last weekend everything was not executed perfectly well," Norris said. "And that’s where it cost us.

"I’m very happy and 99.5% I’m probably happy with."

Asked if he felt he and McLaren could strain together a series of wins, Norris said: "A run of wins... I don’t want to be over-confident and say that at all."

But he added: "We could go on and win races. I definitely think that’s possible with how the team are performing and how I’m performing.

"But we’re against one of the best drivers ever in F1 and one of the best performing teams in F1 and then you have everyone else apart from that who can easily get in the mix too."

That is a blistering lap by Max Verstappen!

Verstappen has left the issue with his car earlier on in this session far behind him as he sets a fast lap time.

Oh dear, Lando Norris has a front lock-up and takes a trip to the gravel.

You are seeing a very clear indication of the difference the soft tyre makes around here. It's the perfect tyre for this circuit, which has a lot of energy demands on the tyre - and the soft tyre will generate huge grip over a single lap that we need for qualifying.

Did the Ferraris hear me calling them a little quiet? They've just put their cars fastest, both on a set of new soft tyres.

Charles Leclerc goes P1 and Carlos Sainz in second.

Oh, but what's this? Max Verstappen goes the fastest and Oscar Piastri wants to join in too as he goes second fastest.

Oscar Piastri's car is being sprayed with flo-vis paint on the upgraded front wing and front suspension.

The McLaren team will be hoping to use the paint's flow to study the aerodynamics.

The two Saubers, Yuki Tsunoda, Lance Stroll and Daniel Ricciardo have bolted on the soft tyres.

Everyone else remains on either the hard tyres or mediums.

Yuki Tsunoda goes third in those new shiny soft tyres. Lance Stroll, who's just extended his Aston Martin contract, goes second fastest.

What we're seeing, I have to say, is the kerb work that they have done, and adding little narrow gravel strips on the outside of the kerbs, I think is working. We are not seeing cars running wide nearly as much as we have in the past.

A little over 10 minutes to go.

Lewis Hamilton is the only car out on track setting lap times.

But he's now joined by Valtteri Bottas, Logan Sargeant and Zhou Guanyu.

Kevin Magnussen goes wide in turn one. But, he's sitting comfortably in eighth spot, nine tenths behind the fastest car of Lewis Hamilton.

As much as the teams are always testing the cars and components and things like that, the drivers are also testing their lines, their testing their braking points, they are just seeing how far they can push the limits of the car on the different tyres that they're on.

1. Lewis Hamilton 1:06.254

2. George Russell

3. Max Verstappen

4. Sergio Perez

5. Lando Norris

6. Charles Leclerc

7. Carlos Sainz

8. Kevin Magnussen

9. Oscar Piastri

10. Esteban Ocon

Image source, Getty Images

Ferrari, who have traditionally been strong in Austria, have had a difficult last couple of races. They were the fourth fastest team behind Red Bull, McLaren and Mercedes in Spain despite a significant upgrade.

But Charles Leclerc, third in the championship two points behind Lando Norris, said he did not believe that was indicative of a general drop in performance.

Leclerc said: "Montreal, I think we've identified quite well what was going wrong. And it was more down to the tyres. In Barcelona, I think it was just raw pace and we were just slower than what we expected.

"We still have some work to try and find something and understand a bit more these new parts that we are using now. However, I don't think that the issues were the same in Montreal and Barcelona, so I don't think it's a trend.

"We've been struggling mostly with long, slow-speed corners, which here there are a little bit less. So that's a good sign for us.

"But we're also working on that in order to have a better car in those corners, which I think we've seen some good steps forward in the last few races.

"However, we were struggling then in other corners, so we've just got to put everything together, but we are working on it and I'm confident it will be fine this weekend."

"That was so scary, man. So dangerous!"

Yuki Tsunoda was reacting to the Williams of Alex Albon.

Yuki Tsunoda was making his merry way around the track, when he almost got into contact with the Williams of Alex Albon. Oh dear, that was close.

So Max Verstappen has already used four internal combustion engines, and the various other power-producing parts, if you like, of those, so that's the maximum limit you're allowed for the season, so any new one would mean a grid penalty.

Now, there was a report in a Dutch newspaper, Der Telegraf, yesterday saying the engine that he had to have replaced in Canada a couple of races a go had been written off by Honda.

I'm told by inside Red Bull that's not entirely correct - yet, but that the engine itself is likely to be lost, even if some of the parts can be salvaged. So that in itself, just losing that Canada engine, will mean a guaranteed engine penalty down the line, in this case it'll be 10 places on the grid at a future race. And they'll probably take it at somewhere like Spa, for example, where overtaking is easy.

The Ferraris have been a bit quiet this session.

Charles Leclerc is in sixth spot, while team-mate Carlos Sainz is in seventh.

Sainz spoke about their little fight last weekend in Spain, and said there will be more "ding dongs" in the future.