Practice 3 Report - Piastri takes final practice

Oscar Piastri, Mexican GP 2024
© McLaren

McLaren made a big step forward in the last practice session for the Mexican Grand Prix with Oscar Piastri leading Lando Norris to a commanding one-two, ahead of Carlos Sainz.

Max Verstappen also bounced back after a difficult Friday and was fourth quickest, but the Dutch driver was not happy with the half a second gap to the two McLaren as well as the balance of his car. Mercedes also seems in the hunt, as Hamilton matched Verstappen’s best lap time, while Yuki Tsunoda confirmed his great pace since the start of the weekend and was 7th fastest, ahead of Russell and with a bit of a gap to the rest of the midfield contenders.

Having struggled to find the best balance of the car with the new floor that has finally been added to the MCL38, McLaren did a big leap from Friday to this session. Piastri, having his first session with the new part ended up beating Norris by just 0.059s, the title contender having a couple of offs early on in the session, but put together a solid lap on his final run. Piastri advantage over his team mate came in the first sector that may have come from a tow on the main straight.

At Ferrari it was Sainz who managed to put a lap together in the qualifying simulations, but the SF-24 was no match for the McLaren in the quicker, second sector, after being clearly the fastest car in the first sector. That was perfectly demonstrated by Leclerc’s last effort, as on used tyres and with no tow at all, he set the best first sector of the session. The Monegasque driver, unlike his team mate, was unable to put a whole lap together and slipped to P5, after being the quickest of all with the first set of Soft tyres.

For Verstappen the work done overnight by the team started to pay off, as he was able to complete his program and was running close to the front of the field. But Max was not happy with the balance of his car, initially complaining that “I have no rear grip” and reacting badly to the changes made to the set-up before his qualifying run, claiming that, “this doesn’t work at all - it’s no good”.

Like in Austin, the RB20 seems to be only the third quickest car around this circuit and with Ferrari in between the McLaren and Verstappen, that could spell a difficult Sunday for the championship leader.

Pérez had a torrid time, unable to complete a clean lap on the qualifying run and complaining the front brakes were not working, so he was down in P14, more than 0.7s off his team mate’s time.

Mercedes had a mixed session. Hamilton was competitive against Verstappen and the two Ferraris, slotting into P5 with what he called “a pretty decent lap”, but Russell was unable to do a clean lap in the final runs and dropped to P8, more than 0.3s away from the veteran English driver

Making the most of a slightly modified floor that is available just on his car, Tsunoda, who had been third quickest on both Friday sessions, stayed comfortably inside the top ten, even beating one of the Mercedes and looking very confident in the balance of his car. Lawson started off the session with a spin in Turn 14 but then made good progress throughout the session to get to the back of the top 10.

Kevin Magnussen was 9th quickest, in spite of an off in Turn 12 on his final qualifying simulation, but Hulkenberg was down in P16, the German complaining “the brakes don’t feel the same as yesterday” right from the start of the session and having a big off in Turn 12 at the end of the session, as the issue persisted.