Max Verstappen was fastest in third practice for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix the three-time champion set a 28.412 going almost two tenths ahead of Charles Leclerc. Sergio Perez put his Red Bull third he was nearly three-tenths behind Verstappen.<\/p>\n
The reigning world champion, who won the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix, didn’t improve on his final run in the last five minutes following Guanyu Zhou’s big crash at Turns Seven and Eight.<\/p>\n
George Russell was fourth nearly six hundredths behind Perez as he put his Mercedes seven thousandths faster than Lando Norris. \u00a0The big story of Friday has been that Ollie Bearman will make his debut for Ferrari this weekend in Jeddah after Carlos Sainz was ruled out after being diagnosed with appendicitis.<\/p>\n
Bearman becomes the third youngest driver, the youngest British and Ferrari driver should he start Saturday\u2019s Grand Prix. The Englishman drove a smooth and steady session going tenth fastest, just under nine-tenths off Verstappen. The Essex-born driver had a busy session.<\/p>\n
He was one of the first drivers on track and racked up as many miles as possible on the medium tyres, at one point going fastest ahead of Lewis Hamilton, and ended up in tenth place, less than one second behind pace-setter Verstappen. For the first time in recent history 25% of the grid come from one country and nearly half from commonwealth countries.<\/p>\n
Ferrari’s statement on Carlos Sainz following his appendectomy after FP3 said, \u201cCarlos is out of surgery. Everything went well and he is now resting at the hospital. We send him our full support for a quick recovery.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fernando Alonso was sixth, the Spaniard three-quarters of a second behind Norris as he went nine hundredths faster than Aston Martin teammate Lance Stroll. The two splitting the McLaren\u2019s as Oscar Piastri who was nine hundredths behind and half a tenth faster than Hamilton and Bearman.<\/p>\n
Most of the fastest times came in the closing five minutes after a crash for Guanyu Zhou at Turn Seven and Eight. The Sauber lost the back end and slid into the barriers, which caused a lot of damage to the back end of and especially right-rear corner with the wheel hanging flimsily.<\/p>\n
Kevin Magnussen was eleventh he was half a tenth ahead of Pierre Gasly, with the RB of Yuki Tsunoda spilt the Alpines as he was three thousandths ahead of Esteban Ocon. Nico Hulkenberg was fifteenth a tenth behind Ocon, and Daniel Ricciardo sixteenth.<\/p>\n
Alex Albon was seventeenth ahead of both Sauber\u2019s with Valtteri Bottas nearly three-tenths behind and comfortably faster than teammate Guanyu Zhou. On a day when it was announce Audi would buy a full stake in the Swiss team for 2026, from current owner Islero Investments AG<\/p>\n
Nearly all drivers had one flying lap at the end after the session was stopped for ten minutes. Logan Sargeant had damaged his FW44’s left-front trackrod when hitting the wall inside Turn Twenty-Two during the early running and he only completed 2 laps as a result, with no time set for the American.<\/p>\n
Max Verstappen was fastest in third practice for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix the three-time champion set a 28.412 going almost two tenths ahead of Charles Leclerc. Sergio Perez put his Red Bull third he was nearly three-tenths behind Verstappen. The reigning world champion, who won the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix, didn’t improve on his<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":11841,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[2234,390,664,709,754,765,768,1027,1028,1283,1572,1637,1642,1774,1775,1776,1993],"class_list":["post-13200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-race-reports","tag-2234","tag-charles-leclerc","tag-f1","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-one","tag-fp","tag-fp3","tag-jeddah","tag-jeddah-corniche-circuit","tag-max-verstappen","tag-practice-reports","tag-red-bull","tag-red-bull-racing","tag-saudi-arabia","tag-saudi-arabian-gp","tag-saudi-arabian-grand-prix","tag-third-practice"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13200","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13200"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13201,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13200\/revisions\/13201"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}