Max verstappen took the last free practice session, thus breaking the great dominance of Lewis hamilton, who set his best time on hard tires. The fight for pole, with tires being equal, is much more even than seen in this round.
Although in free third parties it is usually less strong, that does not mean that there were no scares. Own Lewis hamilton He checked the escape from Turn 1 (one of the few on this circuit), when he came out at the beginning of the session on hard tires, which was what Mercedes tried the most in this session.
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That did not stop the seven-time champion from being scared. Hamilton showed great performance on the harder compound, but in conditions that will not be exactly qualifying and race conditions. The advantage of having the Brazilian engine, which allowed him to achieve that fearsome victory, will be key on a track where the average speed per lap is around 250 km / h.
That does not mean that it will be easy for qualifying. Max verstappenWithout pushing too hard initially but later on with soft tires, he managed to improve the British notably to take the best time.
In these free pictures, two very worrying images were seen, in both cases with Hamilton as the protagonist. The Briton almost got hit twice for going too slow on the line, first for Pierre Gasly (who had to go to the turn 1 loophole) and then for a Nikita mazepin that avoided him by pure reflexes … after not seeing what was in front of him. The white flag problem is going to show up eventually for the rest of the weekend.
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As for the Spanish, the usual heads and tails. Carlos Sainz he set the 8th time lap of the session, in a session in which the red car was relatively stable. For its part, Fernando Alonso he settled for the 11th, although in his garage they did have to review the settings. At the end of the run he finished with a retouched suspension and a modified front wing, in search of a better preparation for the qualifying session in the afternoon.
Apart from them, we must highlight the great ‘enemies’ of Alpine. The AlphaTauri showed that the Honda engine works very well on this circuit, as demonstrated by the 4th of Yuki tsunoda and the 5th of Pierre Gasly.