[ad_1]
Moments earlier, Verstappen had edged Carlos Sainz by 0.057 seconds as the Ferrari driver spent much of the hour in the lead thanks to his performance on the medium tire earlier in the session.
An interesting common thread within FP3 was the rapid degradation of the soft tires over a single lap, and the impressive early sectors for those trying the red-walled C5 were often unable to maintain that level of performance throughout the final two intervals. .
Towards the end of the session, the teams began to resolve this issue and Lewis Hamilton and Oscar Piastri moved into the top four in subsequent testing on soft tires. George Russell then joined the pair in the upper echelons on his own smooth ride in the final 10 minutes, as improvements began to threaten the medium tire times of both Ferrari and Red Bull.
Early braking issues had hit the Red Bulls as they flashed first by making more concerted runs throughout FP3, although these were resolved after their first runs on the medium compound, although Verstappen and Sergio Perez were outclassed by the Ferraris on the C4 boots.
Verstappen, however, couldn’t find much in the way of performance on his first tilt with both the softs, failing to improve on any of the sectors he had produced on the mediums. This also proved to be the case for Sainz; despite a better opening sector of the session, the Spaniard was unable to maintain that momentum beyond turn 6 and was half a tenth off his best time on medium tires.
Hamilton closed in on Sainz’s 1’16”791, set in the first half of the session with the mediums, but the decline in the higher-speed corners appeared to continue; Verstappen said the tires tended to move a lot more in high-speed corners.
But they seemed to get to the drivers with extended running, which allowed Verstappen to set a time of 1’16”734 after the checkered flag to demonstrate that the soft tires had value in qualifying.
Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB20
Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images
Before he could celebrate his best time, Leclerc clocked 1m16.714s at the very end to move to the top of the standings, ensuring the top four were all within 0.1s. Sainz remained third overall, having been unable to improve on the soft tires.
Hamilton had a frustrating time during the first few runs, his dismay at losing significant time on the straights to the Ferraris was evident on the radio, but he improved into the top six despite cutting the gravel at the exit of turn 11 as Mercedes found it. more time.
The Mercedes seemed to settle into the session, and continued running on soft tires allowed Hamilton to set a time that was ultimately enough for fourth place overall, 0.08 seconds ahead of his teammate Russell.
Fernando Alonso improved to sixth place on his final lap of the session, having been behind teammate Lance Stroll following his penultimate effort on softs, which took him above the Red Bull of Sergio Pérez .
Piastri, Stroll and Lando Norris completed the top 10, with the McLarens failing to improve during the final wave of position changes as the soft tires began to produce performance gains.
Yuki Tsunoda and Valtteri Bottas were 11th and 12th ahead of Alex Albon, who took control of Logan Sargeant’s car for the rest of the weekend, leaving the American on the bench. Sargeant will no longer participate in the weekend, as Williams does not have a replacement tank to build.
Results of the 3rd PCRD:
[ad_2]
