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But it was an even worse start for Kick Sauber’s Zhou Guanyu, who spun exiting the first corner and slid rearwards into the barriers, reporting that “I have no idea what’s happening with the car” as he triggered a red flag for the second day in a row.
Following a brief stoppage, the remaining drivers got back down to business on a mixture of Pirelli’s medium and hard compounds, with Verstappen and FP2 pace-setter Fernando Alonso soon moving into the 1m 14s to dip under Friday’s benchmark.
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Another round of improvements arrived at the halfway mark of the session, when the soft tyres appeared for the first time, bringing a series of mid-1m 13s laps from Hamilton, Lando Norris and Charles Leclerc – the latter mentioning some “pulling” and brake issues.
As proceedings drew to a close and the final soft-shod laps came in, which included a ‘Wall of Champions’ thump for Alex Albon, it was Hamilton – a six-time pole-sitter and seven-time winner in Canada – who produced the pace-setting time of 1m 12.549s.
Verstappen eventually emerged as Hamilton’s nearest challenger, some four-tenths away after complaining that his car was “jumping around a lot” and then tapping the Wall of Champions, with Russell a few hundredths further back in third position.
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