Valtteri Bottas narrowly beat Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton to the fastest time in yesterday’s practice session for the Formula One British Grand Prix. The Finn lapped the 5.8-kilometer long Silverstone track in a time of one-minute, 26.732 seconds, edging his team-mate by just 0.069 seconds on a cool and overcast day at the former Second World War bomber base.

Ferrari's Charles Leclerc, who started from pole and and led the last race in Austria until Red Bull’s Max Verstappen snatched the win away from the Monegasque two laps from the end, was third. The 21-year-old was just 0.197 seconds adrift of the Mercedes pair, however, around a track suited to the strengths of the silver cars. His speed, which put him over two-tenths clear of team-mate Sebastian Vettel in fourth, raised hopes that Ferrari could have the speed to challenge their dominant German rivals over the rest of the weekend.