Saturday's opening qualifying session of the Spanish GP was hot on the heels of the strong sun in Barcelona and the qualifying simulations on the track. Charles Leclerc got the best of it
Free practice in the Barcelona heat is over. On Saturday morning (21), which will qualify in a few hours, the cars took to the track for the third and final free session of the Spanish GP. In the last attempts to understand the news brought by all teams with the updates in time for the grid definition, the track was not so busy. At the end of the hour, Charles Leclerc took the lead.
But there is no denying that the third free practice left a taste for more. The reason: the top six drivers - the Ferrari, Red Bull, and Mercedes duos - were separated by only 0.0488 seconds. Leclerc did 1min19s772, while Sergio Pérez, sixth, did 1min20s260.
Max Verstappen was second, only 0s072 behind Leclerc. George Russell was third to last in the list of those under 1min20s, while Lewis Hamilton and Carlos Sainz, in that order, appear fourth and fifth, ahead of Pérez.
Although outside this small group, Lando Norris was only 0.6s6 slower than the leader: a good figure for the seventh-placed driver. Kevin Magnussen was the last to be within a second, and together with Valtteri Bottas and Esteban Ocon, he rounded out the top-10.
The weekend is, so far, undefeated with red flags. Which is not to say that it has any kind of problems. The first minutes of TL3 featured two fires in the rear brakes of the cars. Initially, Pierre Gasly; then, more seriously, Mick Schumacher. The two had to deliver their cars to the AlphaTauri and Haas garages, respectively. Neither of them returned to the track.
GRANDE PRÊMIO has Eric Calduch on location to cover the category's actions at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya and can follow everythingLIVE and in REAL TIME. Soon after, qualifying starts at 11:00 a.m. [Brasilia, GMT-3].
Check out how TL3 went:
The third free practice, positioned at lunchtime in Spanish time, delivered even hotter temperature than that of Friday's sessions and crossed the 30°C mark. The sky was almanac: practically no cloud for the last preparations before qualifying.
When the clock struck 1 pm local time, Lando Norris was the first to take the track. The McLaren driver entered yesterday's TL2 with a paraffin and ready for some testing, but the day ended early because Norris went through the zebra and damaged the floor of his car. With everything recovered, he went after the lost time and medium tires.
Before more people could take the track, problems for Pierre Gasly. The car showed up with a fire outbreak at the rear while still inside the pit-lane and made AlphaTauri work quickly to control the situation and send the car back to the garage.
The start of TL3 was slower than expected. Valtteri Bottas was one more to come out, but after ten minutes only the two, Norris and Bottas, had timed laps. A few others had only entered for installation laps, but returned to the pits.
After that, a bit more movement: the two Haas drivers went for their fast laps, as did Yuki Tsunoda, who attacked the zebra hard and lost time. But a new problem with fire would manifest itself: Mick Schumacher also started to have some flames at the height of the right rear brake and took the car back to the pit-lane. Back at the team, the fire worsened and did a lot of damage to the rear of the Haas.
Luckily, however, neither situation caused any interruption on the track: only damage to the drivers. Red Bull had not even put their cars on the track, but started to do so from then on. The fast laps started to appear: with the soft setting, Charles Leclerc ran 1min20s278 and put 0s2 on Carlos Sainz, who had his chassis changed for this Saturday after what boss Mattia Binotto called a "small leak".
Lewis Hamilton's situation was also somewhat complicated. On the Mercedes radio, the seven-time champion warned that he had a problem with his moving wing and would have to return to the pits for the team to assess. Max Verstappen appeared on soft tires and did a good lap, but also gave his warning to the team: he had difficulties turning the car at low speed.
At the halfway mark of practice, Leclerc was leading and was joined by Verstappen, Sainz, Sergio Pérez, George Russell, Hamilton, Bottas, Esteban Ocon, Guanyu Zhou, and Fernando Alonso in the top-10.
The McLaren and Aston Martin duos painted far from that, outside the top-10, but at least with an explanation: they hadn't yet put on the soft tires to do launch laps. The one who did this was Kevin Magnussen, who caught up with Schumacher's absence for Haas and jumped up to fifth place, ahead of Russell and Hamilton.
After some time dotting the session, Leclerc appeared to be even faster. With 1min19s772 he put an exclamation mark on the position at that point, but brought Russell in tow. The Mercedes driver also dropped below 1min20s and did 1min19s920 to achieve second place. Meanwhile, Hamilton was complaining: Mercedes was giving Russell's lap information, not the best overall lap, which is what Lewis would have liked to see.
The TV broadcast went to find Gasly. The French driver was still out of the car with less than 20 minutes to go, something that virtually guaranteed he would not return to the cockpit. So, essentially, Gasly and Schumacher didn't even participate in practice, despite the German having a very high timed lap.