Bottas grabs final practice top spot

Williams driver Valtteri Bottas topped Saturday morning's final free practice session for the Austrian Grand Prix with a stunning last-lap effort.

The Finn had shown well during the early stages of the session, ending up second-fastest on soft-compound pace on a strong weekend for Williams.

But Lewis Hamilton had looked set to top the times for Mercedes when he knocked the other Williams of Felipe Massa off top spot by three thousandths of a second with four minutes of the hour remaining.

Bottas then strung together a superb final lap, including the fastest final sector of the session, to go fastest by just five hundredths of a second.

Toro Rosso's Daniil Kvyat also put in an impressive late lap to go fourth-fastest, with Nico Rosberg ending up fifth having earlier set the pace when the field was running on the soft-compound Pirellis.

A tight qualifying session is expected this afternoon, with Fernando Alonso down in sixth but only two tenths slower than Bottas.

Red Bull's taxing weekend continued, with Daniel Ricciardo half a second off the pace in sixth place, while team-mate Sebastian Vettel was 10th, seven tenths down.

Sandwiched by the Red Bulls were Kevin Magnussen and Kimi Raikkonen.

Jenson Button had a frustrating session, running off track at Turn 1 and complaining about a lack of engine braking.

McLaren discovered that he had a problem with the right-rear brakes, meaning it had to change the calliper as well as replacing the floor, which was damaged when Button went off.

The 2009 Formula 1 world champion managed only four laps during the session and was unable to post a serious time, meaning he ended up slowest.