Saudi Arabian GP 2024
MARCH 8, 2024
Practice 3 Report - Verstappen on top
© Red Bull
Max Verstappen returned to the top of the time sheets in the final practice session for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, the World Champion setting two nearly identical lap times on his final run to beat Charles Leclerc by nearly 0.2s with a lap time of 1m28.412.
Red Bull, like Mercedes and a couple of other teams, elected to run two sets of Soft tyres in this session, focusing on qualifying preparations with Verstappen dominating procedures. Hitting debris in Turn 10 late in the session was the only issue for the Dutchman, whose car escaped any noticeable damage, but team mate Sérgio Pérez remained half a second in arrears, the Mexican setting the 3rd quickest time but never looking likely to best Verstappen.
The main story of this first part of the day was Oliver Bearman’s rushed Grand Prix debut, as the British teenager had to step in for Carlos Sainz at the last minute.
With the Spaniard requiring an emergency appendicitis surgery, it was the Formula 2 driver who stepped into his car and the least that can be said is that Bearman did a sterling job. Unsurprisingly he was the driver with the most laps done in this session, with a total of 22, and apart from going over track limits in the tricky Turn 22 on his final lap, Bearman didn’t put a wheel wrong and impressed everyone by getting into the top ten, his deficit for Leclerc being of just 0.7s, which was pretty good for a complete rookie.
For Ferrari, Sainz’s absence means that, realistically, the team can only rely on Charles Leclerc to take the battle to Red Bull and the Monegasque driver showed, again, how quick he is on twisty and quick circuits by being the only one remotely close to Verstappen. The gap between the two was just bellow 0.2s, but with temperatures now going down for qualifying, there’s all to play for in qualifying.
Mercedes seems to be firmly the third quickest team around this track, George Russell being fourth quickest and quite close to Pérez, but McLaren is not far behind, as Lando Norris was in P5 and just 0.007s behind his English friend,
Piastri and Hamilton were also closely matched, in 8th and 9th place, respectively, but remained at arm’s length from their team mates, who definitively seem to have the upper hand this weekend.
Aston Martin demonstrated that the FP2 fireworks were more for sponsor Aramco’s benefit, as Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll ended up this session in P6 and P7 and with a siezeable gap to Verstappen and Leclerc. But the top ten was filled with only the five fastest teams, confirming what we saw in Bahrain, which is that there are two clear groups in the field and the second group of drivers need someone at the front to have an issue if they want to get into Q3 qualifying and into the points in the race.
Kevin Magnussen was best of the rest in 11th place, with Pierre Gasly confirming the progress made by Alpine in this front limited, faster track, the Frenchman ending the session in 12th place after being in P9 on Thursday’s night session.
Yuki Tsunoda was, again, the fastest of the two Racing Bulls drivers, P13, less than a tenth of a second away from Magnussen and 0.168s faster than team mate Daniel Ricciardo.
Guanyu Zhou brought out the first red flag of the season as he crashed heavily in Turn 8 after oversteering coming out of the previous corner. The Chinese driver hit the Tec Pro barriers with the rear before the left front also hit the wall hard, the team now facing a race against time to get his car ready in time for Q1.
Logan Sargeant didn’t even complete one timed lap, as he touched the inside wall of Turn 22 – as Stroll had done right at the start of FP1 – damaging the steering column, so in spite of the Williams’ mechanics best efforts, the American ran out of time to do any meaningful running in this final practice session.