Practice 3 Report - Gasly fastest in Red Flag interrupted session

Pierre Gasly
© Alpine

Pierre Gasly set the fastest time at the end of a massively disrupted FP3 session, a massive crash from Logan Sargeant stopping running for more than 43 minutes!

The Williams driver was a bit wide coming off the highly banked Turn 3 and kept his foot down when the right rear wheel touched the wet grass, the sudden lack of traction sending the car straight across the track and into a massive impact with the guardrails on the left hand side of the circuit.

Fortunately Sargeant was able to get out of his badly damaged car unaided and walked back to the pits. The FW46 was already seriously damaged by the impact before fire broke out in the rear of the car, causing further damage to the Williams.

Sargeant was, like Albon, running the new upgraded package and it’s now not clear the team have enough spare cars to put on the spare monocoque and it’s also uncertain the American will be able to start the race at all, his participation in qualifying requiring a miracle from his mechanics.

With persistent light rain over the track few drivers ventured out when the pit lane opened but after Piastri opted for a set of used Intermediates and immediately went much quicker than anyone else, there was some more track action until Sargeant’s shunt brought procedures to a halt.

As the guardrails had also been damaged by the impact, clearing the track took almost all the time remaining in the session.

With just two minutes left on the clock it was clear not all drivers were going to be able to start a flying lap and track position was crucuail for what, effectively, the fastest laps of the session.

Pierre Gasly ended up ahead of Kevin Magnussen and Valtteri Bottas, making it for a highly unusual top three but lap times were meaningless and that final lap was just good for the drivers to get familiar with track conditions before what is expected to also be a wet qualifying session.

From the top teams only the two McLaren drivers had done a bit of running before the red flag, so it’s no surprise Norris was 4th quickest and Piastri was in P7, all the others being towards the bottom of the time sheets. Pérez and Tsunoda were the unlucky ones, as they hadn’t set a lap time before the interruption and got out too late to the line on the final lap, none of them setting a lap time in FP3.

Nico Hulkenberg’s terrible weekend continued as he crashed in Turn 11 and damaged the Haas’ front wing – fortunately the older spec! – while Max Verstappen is due to see the Stewards having crossed the white line while passing several cars on his way out of the pits, as he attempted to get to the finish line before the session would end.