Max Verstappen was fastest in third practice for the Spanish Grand Prix, the two time champion set a 15.664 on the soft tyre putting himself a quarter of a second faster than teammate Sergio Perez. The two drivers set their fastest times in the first half of the session before the wet weather moved in.
The rain then made for limited running in the second half of third practice with only a handful of exploratory laps on the softs as the circuit sat between the conditions. The wet weather moving from the Pyrenees north of Barcelona is set to linger for the whole day. That completely disturbed the teams’ usual run programmes in FP3, with all drivers rushing out of the pits at the drop of the green flag to get some precious dry running in.
The single lap running at the start of the session thus set the order, Lewis Hamilton was third four tenths off with the two Spaniards then splitting the Mercedes. Carlos Sainz going fourth a tenth and three quarters behind the Englishman with Fernando Alonso fifth. Alonso going six thousandths ahead of the second Mercedes of George Russell.
The stand out incident of the session was caused by Logan Sargent, the Williams driver going off at Catalunya. The America appeared to get caught out and went off and dragged the car along the barrier, following the initial correction of a slide through the final corner.
But the rain intensified the red flag put paid to any more improvements. After a nine-minute delay, the session was green-flagged again, but it took until hast the half-hour mark for drivers to sporadically venture out on a damp track.
Charles Leclerc was seven hundredths behind Russell, Mercedes have struggled to show the impact of their upgrades but Hamilton’s third perhaps shows potential. Leclerc thinks he has clutch issues but his engineer assures him they cannot see anything wrong with his upgraded Ferrari.
Valtteri Bottas was eighth ahead of Yuki Tsunoda and Lando Norris. Norris was the first out in the damp conditions, with the McLaren leading the cars out with around twenty-minutes to go. intermediate running could prove of great value for Saturday afternoon’s qualifying and for Sunday’s grand prix, with more potential rain on the way.
Guanyu Zhou was eleventh ahead of Nyck De Vries, Lance Stroll and Nico Hulkenberg. Oscar Piastri was fifeenth for McLaren ahead of Esteban Ocon. Hulkenberg’s teammate Kevin Magnussen was nearly three tenths behind Ocon as he spilt the two Alpine’s.
Ocon and Pierre Gasly had opted to use the dry time at the start of the session to run on medium tyres, rather than the soft compound the rest of the field set their fastest times on.
The track dried sufficiently to enable the use of slick tyres in the closing minutes, but the dampness meant no drivers were able to improve on the times they had set at the beginning of the session.
The two Williams rounded out the field, Alex Albon going nearly eight tenth faster than Sargeant.
