Max Verstappen comes alive and challenges McLaren, as Piastri leads Russell

As it happened

Jack Doohan was the first to set a lap, but Max Verstappen was the quickest of the first drivers to take the track with a 1:17.632. Alpine’s Doohan slotted in P2 a tenth and a half behind the Dutchman.

Lando Norris emerged from the garage but failed to match his Dutch rival coming 1 second off the Red Bull Racing driver’s time. His teammate however did manage to beat Verstappen. Charles Leclerc’s turn was up and his first effort was only good enough for P4, half a second away from the Australian, who’d clocked in a 1:17.298.

Lewis Hamilton took his SF-25 out for a push lap and put himself just behind Piastri, with George Russell beating his former teammate as well as the Australian.

Verstappen, though, managed to put in a very strong lap, beating the Mercedes driver’s lap time by more than half a second with a 1:16.646. For FP3 the RB21 seemed to be more workable, since the lap times appeared to be easily extracted from it.

Leclerc then did a 1:16.8, good enough for P4. 

Piastri went slightly quicker than the Monegasque, with Mercedes rookie Andrea Kimi Antonelli joining the party at the top for the first time this weekend. Lewis Hamilton seemed to be gelling a lot better with his car, having put in the best first sector of the session until then, however he had to abort the lap after losing some time in sector 2. 

Alexander Albon then slotted in in a strong P2 on the hard compound, just a tenth and a half behind his former Red Bull teammate.

Sainz then moved up behind his teammate in P3. Leclerc put in a 1:16.676, just 30 one thousandths of a second off Verstappen’s time, and Hamilton nearly eeked out his teammate, coming within one one thousandths of a second of the Ferrari veteran.

Following that first stint of racing action, all the major names went to the pits, after which Russell emerged from his Mercedes box to take P1 with a 1:16.402, mitigating the loss of performance on the soft Mercedes struggled with during FP2 yesterday.

Norris then edged out Verstappen for P2, despite dropping a wheel on the gravel on the exit of turn 6 coming two tenths off of his fellow Briton’s lead. With 20 minutes on the clock, Russell lead from Norris, Verstappen, Leclerc and Hamilton.

Albon and Sainz banged the table with authority as they took P2 and P3 respectively, showing Williams speed. However, Max Verstappen once again brought the times down as he went 4 tenths faster than Russell’s time, with a 1:16.002. Piastri then wrestled his MCL39’s loose rear to put himself in P2 behind Verstappen, despite having a snap of oversteer coming out of turn 11.

Russell then set the benchmark in sector 1, did a strong sector 2, but then lost out in the final improving on his previous time but not making an impact on the order. Norris then beat Russell’s record in sector one, but did not managed to do the same with Verstappen’s record in sector 2, and aborted the lap before crossing the finish line.

Leclerc than came out for a push lap which brought him up to P6 with Russell, Antonelli, Sainz, Albon and himself being within a tenth of each other. Hamilton went up to P8, managing to bridge the gap to his teammate which until had been of 6 tenth during FP1 and 4 tenths during FP2.

Home hero, Piastri was the first to dip below the 1:16’s with a 1:15.921 taking provisional P1 ahead of the first qualifying session of the season. 

With 5 minutes to go the order was Piastri, Verstappen, Russell, Antonelli, Sainz, Albon, Leclerc, Hamilton, Yuki Tsunoda and Lando Norris closing up the top ten.

As the session came to a close, Leclerc and Verstappen went out for a push lap, which saw the Monegasque improve to P4 and the Dutchman abort his fast lap attempt after a snap of oversteer coming out of turn 11 caused him to lose a significant amount of time. 

In the final three minutes Russell closed up to Piastri to within 39 one thousandths of a second of the Australian’s lead, and teammate Antonelli improved up to P5.

Leclerc then took to the radio to report an excess in oversteer in the SF-25’s behaviour which he asked Ferrari to review after the session.