SAUDI ARABIAN GP – Max Verstappen sets an ominous pace in third practice eight tenths ahead of teammate Sergio Perez
Max Verstappen continued to set the pace in third practice for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. The Dutchman set a 28.485 on the soft tyre which put him over six tenths ahead of his Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez, this makes him the favourite for pole position going into qualifying.
Verstappen showcased more excellent pace on Saturday afternoon with early hard tyre runs, prior to a flurry of laps on the soft tyre. Despite the best efforts of Perez, the Mexican could only get to just over six tenths off his teammate on his final run at the end of the session.
The only real drama for Verstappen was a near collision with Lando Norris, he failed to move out the McLaren’s way on a cool-down lap as Norris was on his qualifying simulation.
Aston Martin appear still to be one of the closest challengers with Fernando Alonso going third, however the Spaniard was nearly a second off Verstappen’s session topping time. But Alonso was a quarter of a second faster than his teammate Lance Stroll, who was himself was four hundredths faster than the Mercedes.
Stroll couldn’t respond to his teammate’s time, despite him having new soft tyres he remained over a quarter of a second behind Alonso and a second off Verstappen. But that was good enough to keep him ahead of Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc.
Leclerc spent most of the session near the back of the timesheet, knowing he has a penalty he did a lot of running on the medium before a late soft run moved him to sixth. Ferrari did little to smooth fears over their reliability as both of their drivers appeared to operate with their newly-fitted power units for this weekend running well below full capacity.
Meanwhile, Mercedes looking to rebuild after accepting they have taken the wrong path with their design concept, it’s Alonso and Aston Martin who appear best placed to take advantage of any Red Bull mishaps.
While Red Bull have established themselves as heavy favourites for both qualifying later on Saturday and Sunday’s race, the battle behind them promises to be thrilling with just half a second covering Alonso and the twelve cars that finished behind him.
Lando Norris put his McLaren seventh nearly a hundredth faster than his teammate Oscar Piastri. McLaren looking to have a much stronger weekend following the double retirement in Bahrain, though Piastri was only three thousandths off a second faster than the Alpine of Pierre Gasly.
Carlos Sainz rounded out the top ten after going half a quarter of second faster than the Mercedes of George Russell. The top ten was covered by 1.2 seconds setting up for another competitive qualifying session but the question remains what will happen when the teams turn it up in qualifying later.
The session’s big losers were AlphaTauri, who were unable to send Nyck de Vries out on track after a technical issue left them needing to change his power unit, while team-mate Yuki Tsunoda was last among those who set times.
Nico Hulkenberg was thirteenth going ahead of Esteban Ocon and the two Williams. Alex Albon going two thousandths faster than his teammate Logan Sargeant. Kevin Magnussen, Valtteri Bottas and Yuki Tsunoda rounded out the field.