Saudi Arabian GP: Charles Leclerc tops yet another practice session, pushed Max Verstappen to the second on the last lap


Saudi Arabian GP: Charles Leclerc tops yet another practice session, pushed Max Verstappen to the second on the last lap

Ferrari in FP3 at the Saudi Arabian GP

The third practice session of the Saudi Arabian GP started off slow, not in turns of pace but in getting the drivers on the grid. The first drivers on the track were Valtteri Bottas, Kevin Magnussen and Zhou Guanyu. The fastest lap of the session 1:29.735 was put up by Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, while Nicholas Latifi‘s Williams remained the slowest with 1:31.992.  

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Both the Ferraris got on the grid early in the session and established their dominance with timings touching the 1:30 mark. But it was Max Verstappen, the first driver to reach the 1 minute 29 seconds mark in the session. 

On one of his final push laps in the session, after a purple middle sector, Max Verstappen had hit the kerbs, thus abandoning his push lap taking his RB18 to the garage. Following this, Charles Leclerc, on his final push lap moved to the top with three-hundredths of a second ahead of Max.

How did others do compared to Charles Leclerc?

Charles Leclerc in Saudi Arabia
Charles Leclerc in Saudi Arabia

On the other hand, McLaren’s early signs looked promising. But as the session went on, both the cars were in the garage and consequently pushed down to the lower ranks of the timesheet. The drivers couldn’t put on any push laps further.

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While this weekend, too, just like the one in Bahrain, seems to be a fight between Red Bull and Ferrari as the four drivers of the teams were in a continuous tussle for the top spots, there’s a driver that needs to look out for Valtteri Bottas. The Finnish driver has been putting up strong performances in the practice sessions.

At the 35 minute mark, Pierre Gasly was found stuck in the pit lane exit as his AlphaTauri lost the power. The driver then had to push his 800 kg car back with the help of a single marshall back to the garage to look for the issues. 

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