FP3Weather: Torrential Rain
Air & Track Temperatures: 19-20°C / 21-22°C
V Bottas, FW37-04, PU106B Hybrid 2:00.523 (4th)
F Massa, FW37-02, PU106B Hybrid 2:02.199 (10th)
Quickest Time: L Hamilton (1:59.517)
Notes
• Qualifying for tomorrow’s United States Grand Prix has been postponed until Sunday morning after rain affected most of Saturday’s action.
• A normal qualifying session will take place five hours before the start of the race.
• Despite heavy rain, FP3 went ahead as normal with the prospect of the result determining the grid for the race if tomorrow’s qualifying session cannot be held.
Rob Smedley, Head of Performance Engineering: FP3 was very wet so we used the session to continue improving our performance in the wet. Adding this to what we learned in the wet in Japan and Russia, Valtteri’s fourth place was an indication of the positive steps we are taking. After not running qualifying today, we have to adjust our programmes and be organised for tomorrow’s qualifying session and the race just a few hours later. The morning is looking wet, but hopefully there should be some dry running in the race which will make it quite interesting.
Valtteri Bottas: We had a good session this morning. We have learned a lot and improved the performance in the wet since yesterday. The tyres started to work reasonably well. Finishing fourth was much better than we would expect in the wet. We have to be ready for tomorrow, it will be busy but hopefully we can qualify well.
Felipe Massa: Today we ran FP3 in very wet conditions. Everyone wanted to get some running in so there were many cars on track at the start of the session. Because of this, most of my timed laps I had to deal with traffic. The conditions were very difficult and we had very limited running, so we can only hope Sunday brings us some good weather.
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