German GP final practice and qualifying
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By: Geoff Creighton
Summary
Status: Stopped
That's it for today! Catch us tomorrow for what may prove to be an exceptional race in Germany - and what's the weather going to be like? 
Bottas: "I think weather is going to play a big part tomorrow. A bit disappointed, especially with the pace we had in Q3. Ferrari has been extremely quick here, but we're in a good place for tomorrow."
Verstappen: "We could have been closer, but went a bit wide and bottomed out, and lost the rear. But it's a good result."
"My first lap was spot on, the second lap was better in places" says Hamilton, in a somewhat muted fashion.
It seems to be a fuel system issue for Leclerc, which relegated the Ferrari driver to P10 on tomorrow's grid.
For a man who couldn't even put a glove on this morning, Hamilton has gone and got pole! Only lap in the 1m11s all weekend, tying in nicely with Mercedes' 125 year celebrations.
Q3 results: 1 Hamilton, 2 Verstappen, 3 Bottas, 4 Gasly, 5 Raikkonen, 6 Grosjean, 7 Sainz, 8 Perez, 9 Hulkenberg, 10 Leclerc.
Gasly finds a few tenths and comes up just half a tenth short of demoting Bottas to fourth place. Easily his best effort of the weekend, that.
Raikkonen is up to fifth, just a few thousandths shy of Gasly! Grosjean improves but stays sixth, Sainz moves up to seventh, Hulkenberg can do no better than ninth.
Perez's first - and presumably only - flying lap in Q3 takes him to sixth place, half a tenth down on Grosjean.
Some distraught faces in the crowd, particularly those wearing red. But that's motorsport - sometimes it giveth, and sometimes it taketh away.
Current order: 1 Hamilton, 2 Verstappen, +0.346s; 3 Bottas, +0.455s; 4 Gasly, +0.755s, 5 Grosjean, +1.234s, 6 Sainz, +1.740s, 7 Leclerc (no time), 8 Raikkonen (no time), 9 Hulkenberg (no time), 10 Perez (no time).
Gasly's first flying lap takes him to fourth place, as the Frenchman is four tenths slower than Verstappen. That might just be our first two rows decided.
It might be alright for Leclerc, there's no huge flurry of activity in the #16 garage. Otherwise, Mercedes is currently having it all its own way...
Interesting to see the Melbourne-spec Haas into Q3, with the Germany-spec car out in Q2 - but with such fine margins, they seem pretty evenly matched packages.
Raikkonen's having a blinding weekend so far - easily the cat among the leading pigeons in the earlier sessions, and P6 in Q2 is rather good.
There was a late improvement from Bottas, but it was on another set of mediums so it doesn't change his race strategy.
Advancing to Q3: 1 Hamilton, 2 Leclerc, 3 Gasly, 4 Bottas, 5 Verstappen, 6 Raikkonen, 7 Sainz, 8 Hulkenberg, 9 Grosjean, 10 Perez.
A minute left on the clock - everyone but Leclerc and Gasly (and Verstappen) is now preparing for their final flying laps.
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