Fernando Alonso was fastest in the third practice session ahead of this weekend’s season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix. The Aston Martin driver set a 32.340 in a close fight for the top spot with Max Verstappen with the two two-time champions separated by just five thousandths of a second.<\/p>\n
Aston Martin go into the new season as the most improved team as they are expected to challenge the established top three with Red Bull, Mercedes, Ferrari and Aston Martin covered by just under three-tenths. Verstappen however is the favourite still going into this evenings qualifying session as he topped last Saturday\u2019s test in similar conditions.<\/p>\n
The Dutchman was a tenth faster than his teammate Sergio Perez with Lewis Hamilton fourth. However at some points during the session, Verstappen was less than six-tenths behind Alonso on the slower hard compound, even as he complained of having “no grip”.<\/p>\n
Charles Leclerc spilt the two Mercedes going just over a tenth faster than George Russell, this was despite Hamilton saying on Friday he believed that Mercedes were \u2018a long way off\u2019 the pace.<\/p>\n
Carlos Sainz was eighth rounding out what could be the top four teams into the new season. He was only six-tenths behind Alonso\u2019s session-topping time, the Spaniard said after FP2 on Friday, that the \u201ccar is not exactly responding as I expect or as it did in testing. I’m struggling a bit more with the balance. It’s a bit more out of place compared to where it was.\u201d<\/p>\n
The margins between the leading cars were smaller than they appeared on Friday. There remains a degree of disbelief about Aston Martin\u2019s performance, as it is very rare for teams to make such a large leap, when the regulations are stable, in competitiveness and they finished last season seventh in the championship.<\/p>\n
Oscar Piastri put his McLaren ninth to lead what could be the midfield, the Australian was half a tenth faster that the two Alpines. Pierre Gasly rounding out the top ten after going half a tenth ahead faster than his teammate Esteban Ocon. Guanyu Zhou was twelfth fastest.<\/p>\n
Lando Norris was a tenth behind his teammate and a head of the two Haas\u2019s by almost three tenths. Kevin Magnussen was the first car outside a second in fourteenth, he was four hundredths faster than his teammate Nico Hulkenberg.<\/p>\n
As predicted, Williams and AlphaTauri face a battle to stay off the last row. Alpha Tauri’s Yuki Tsunoda was sixteenth, ahead of Alfa Romeo’s Valtteri Bottas by a tenth and a half, who didn’t get a representative lap in.<\/p>\n
Williams rookie Logan Sargeant was eighteenth ahead of team-mate Alex Albon, with Alpha Tauri\u2019s Nyck de Vries propping up the timesheets.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
BAHRAIN GP \u2013 Fernando Alonso Fastest By A Tenth In Second Practice<\/a><\/p>\n Fernando Alonso was fastest in the third practice session ahead of this weekend’s season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix. The Aston Martin driver set a 32.340 in a close fight for the top spot with Max Verstappen with the two two-time champions separated by just five thousandths of a second. Aston Martin go into the new season<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7313,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[53,198,199,241,242,243,245,664,707,709,754,768,1283,1572,1637,1642,1749,1808,1993],"class_list":["post-11625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-race-reports","tag-53","tag-aston-martin","tag-aston-martin-mercedes","tag-bahrain","tag-bahrain-gp","tag-bahrain-grand-prix","tag-bahrain-international-circuit","tag-f1","tag-fernando-alonso","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-one","tag-fp3","tag-max-verstappen","tag-practice-reports","tag-red-bull","tag-red-bull-racing","tag-sakhir","tag-sergio-perez","tag-third-practice"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11625\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n