Albon keeps Toro Rosso at the top of the morning of the fourth day

Albon was the fastest half an hour before the lunch break, using the softer tires with the C5 compound, just as teammate Daniil Kvyat made it to be faster on Wednesday afternoon.

This allowed him to overtake Daniel Ricciardo, who made the best start using the C4 compound, before setting an even faster time with the C5 just after noon.

Before Ricciardo climbed to the top, Lewis Hamilton was the spearhead, as Mercedes kept his promise yesterday to "focus a little more on performance" on the last day.

Hamilton first showed signs of pacing with the W10 early in the second hour, when he briefly exchanged times at the top with Charles Leclerc's Ferrari while they were both using C2 tires.

Half an hour later, the world champion placed two fastest sectors on the C3 tires, before meeting Robert Kubica's slow Williams, at the final chicane and going to the last penultimate turn to avoid a collision.

In cutting the track, Hamilton still made a slight improvement, which he further improved by a tenth of a second on the second attempt. He was then fastest for the first time in this test with a race on the C4 tires shortly after 11am.

Half an hour later, he was back on the track with the C4 tires, making the first lap of Mercedes below the 1m18 mark with a time of 1m17.9. However, a few moments later, Ricciardo arrived with a slightly faster time.

Hamilton tried the C5 tire before lunch, but his lap times were not particularly fast, suggesting that Mercedes returned to racing with a higher fuel load with the softer compound.

Leclerc slightly improved the C3 tires just before noon, but its position has not changed. Shortly after, Albon began a series of fast descents in the Toro Rosso.

He first climbed into the top three with two short exits on the C4 tire, before climbing to the top with his effort on the C5.

The Alfa Romeo and Haas Ferrari customer teams completed the top six with Antonio Giovinazzi and Romain Grosjean, while Pierre Gasly was seventh for Red Bull, who spent the morning concentrating on the C3 tire races. did not seem to look for performance.

Lando Norris, eighth, pulled out the only red flag of the morning when he lost control at low speed during turn 5 during the first hour when the air temperature was not than 3 degrees C.

The McLaren was spinning very slowly around the circuit at that time, then flickered when Norris climbed on the throttle and, correcting the slip, he headed straight for the gravel trap, and failed until he was ready. reach the wall of tires.

Williams, from Kubica, came to the back of the field behind Lance Stroll's Racing Point. After doing his low-speed aerodynamic checks early in the morning, Williams managed to run well by the day.

Kubica took a lap at the exit of the final chicane at mid-session and, at lunch time, he had completed 48 laps with a best time of 1m21.542 on the C3 tire.