Winter testing over: Russell leads from Verstappen and a quick Williams

Albon surprised not only with his speed, but also with the amount of laps he drove, completing a total of 137 laps. He was followed closely by Esteban Ocon, with the Haas driver doing 103 laps, and George Russell was a long way away with only 91 laps to his name. Max Verstappen only managed to add 81 laps to his tally.

As it happened

Ocon was the only driver to head out to the track immediately after the lights turned green, as was soon followed by his former teammate, Gasly. Eight minutes in, the red flag was waved for a strange reason, as a bus appeared on track in Turn 10. 

Just before the hour mark, Russell jumped to the top with a 1:30.0. The Briton therefore led the session at this point ahead of Gasly and Charles Leclerc’s time from the morning. Furthermore, he also waved to his ex-teammate, Hamilton, as the pair met on the back straight.

15 minutes later, Verstappen seemed unhappy in his car, as he also understeered quite heavily exiting Turn 13. He did that with the older version of the front wing, not the latest one Red Bull Racing brought for today. A couple of laps later, he also locked up on a second push lap into Turn 10.

By the halfway point of the session, Gasly could reclaim the lead from Russell, Verstappen got up to P3 and Hamilton slotted in fourth place, behind the Red Bull Racing driver, a few minutes later, however, Verstappen took the lead and was the first of the day to go under the 1:30’s mark with a 1:29.844.

40 minutes into the second to last hour, Ocon’s race simulation got a bit too real. The Haas driver was called into the pits by his team, but for reasons that are not yet known Ocon was told to stay out at the last minute, coming back onto the track past the bollard, which would result in a penalty during a normal Grand Prix

Alonso takes over from Stroll, Verstappen leads from awfully quick Williams

Lance Stroll, having felt not at 100% last evening, was in doubt of taking part in the morning session, which prompted Alonso to take part in the first four hours of the day, leaving Stroll with enough time to get back on his feet for the afternoon session. Now, the Canadian emerges from the car and the British racing green outfit is currently changing the AMR25's seat to fit Alonso in who will take the wheel for the last hour of winter testing.

A few moments later, Verstappen improved on his own time, setting the new benchmark at 1:29.799. Nevertheless, Williams’ driver, Albon, usurped the Red Bull Racing driver’s place at the top with a 1:29.650. With a little over 40 minutes left to go in the session, McLaren’s Oscar Piastri went out to do some performance runs which saw him go up to P6.

Shortly after Piastri’s run, Verstappen reclaimed his place at the top from Albon’s setting the record in the third sector with a 22.356, for an overall lap time of 1:29.566. When returning to the pits, he almost went into the McLaren pitbox by mistake.

As the clock counted down the final minutes and seconds, Esteban Ocon found himself with the back-end of his Haas going round at turn 1. Ocon then was able to return to the track safely. Verstappen, just a few moments later, also found himself spinning around at turn 1. Though the marshalls waved the yellow flags, there was no need to neutralise the session with the Red Bull Racing driver quickly getting back on his way.

Piastri went on another performance run, and though it was better, it still wasn't good enough to topple Verstappen or Albon. Nevertheless it did suffice to take Russell's P3, which with Russell's last fast lap became P4 with the Mercedes driver taking P1 from Verstappen.