F1 French GP Live Commentary and Updates - FP3 & Qualifying

No immediate takers for the time being though, everybody remaining in their garages for the first minute or so of the session.

For those of you wondering, with Alex Albon on DTM duty at Monza this weekend, and both Sebastien Buemi and Jake Dennis competing in Formula E at Puebla, Red Bull has Estonian F2 whizz Juri Vips on reserve duties this weekend.

Just a little over five minutes to go before practice gets underway. What's your accompanying beverage of choice?

Wolff has also welcomed F1's decision to clamp down on tyre pressures this weekend, following the Pirelli tyre failures that caused Lance Stroll and Max Verstappen to crash out of the Azerbaijan GP last time out. Intriguingly, he said it would ensure a more "level playing field". Here's the story: https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/mercedes-f1-didnt-have-level-playing-field-on-tyre-pressures/6584888/

It's vitally important that Bottas continues his strong Friday form into today, particularly in light of the revelation yesterday from Mercedes boss Toto Wolff that the team will likely wait until winter before deciding its driver lineup. That means if it does decide to promote George Russell, it will leave Bottas with very little time to source an alternative drive... Here's the story: https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/mercedes-could-delay-decision-on-second-2022-f1-seat-until-winter/6582862/

Temperatures this morning are a bit cooler (if perhaps too warm for wellies) than we saw yesterday in FP2 - the latest readouts from the timing screens say that the air temp is 25.3, with track temps of 37.7.

The headline time from Friday's FP2 session came from Max Verstappen, the Red Bull driver pipping Valtteri Bottas's Mercedes by 0.008s. Notably, Bottas set his best time on the medium tyres, where Verstappen was on the soft - although the Finn did attempt a qualifying sim run on the softs that proved three tenths slower.

If you missed any of yesterday's track action, then don't worry. Here's the full analysis of Friday's running from GP editor Alex Kalinauckas, who explains why the race for pole is a little too close to call right now: https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/the-surprise-mercedes-time-that-puts-f1s-victory-fight-back-on-a-knife-edge-in-france/6582340/

Good morning and welcome to Autosport's live text commentary of Saturday's track action from the French Grand Prix at Paul Ricard. We'll have full coverage of FP3, which gets underway in a little under 20 minutes, and qualifying from just before 2pm BST.