F1: Verstappen over Hamilton in Practice 3

Red Bull’s Max Verstappen marked himself as favorite to win pole for the Spanish GP at Barcelona with a lap of 1m17.835s in final F1 practice Saturday morning.

Verstappen finished ahead of the two Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton who was 0.235s behind the Dutchman.

Charles Leclerc put his #16 Ferrari in third 0.473s back while his teammate Carlos Sainz Jr. was 4th 0.575s behind the Red Bull Honda.

Valtteri Bottas rounded out the top-5 in the 2nd Mercedes.

Bottas, Hamilton and now Verstappen. The honors have been evenly split across the three sessions so far, which makes qualifying an incredibly enticing prospect.

But certainly this morning, the Dutchman finally put those small mistakes behind him and looks a very formidable opponent here today.

This could well be the tightest qualifying of the season so far – and the pressure is most certainly on.

McLaren and AlphaTauri are also in the mix for the midfield honors, and the good news for the papaya team is that both their drivers are right up there. Norris wound up sixth, Ricciardo eighth and again, it was a tenth between the two of them.

Somehow, Gasly managed to split the pair in seventh despite the fine margins.

Raikkonen and Perez rounded out the top 10, which left Aston Martin and yesterday’s surprise package Alpine out in the cold. But Alpine could well be holding something back in reserve, and they did have good pace yesterday in FP2 which was in representative conditions for qualifying.

Practice 3 Results

POS	DRIVER	NAT.	TEAM	TIME	GAP	LAPS
1	Max Verstappen	NED	Red Bull Racing	1m17.835s	+0.000s	11
2	Lewis Hamilton	GBR	Mercedes AMG Petronas Team	1m18.070s	+0.235s	14
3	Charles Leclerc	MON	Scuderia Ferrari Mission Winnow	1m18.308s	+0.473s	17
4	Carlos Sainz	ESP	Scuderia Ferrari Mission Winnow	1m18.410s	+0.575s	18
5	Valtteri Bottas	FIN	Mercedes AMG Petronas Team	1m18.423s	+0.588s	15
6	Lando Norris	GBR	McLaren F1 Team	1m18.494s	+0.659s	14
7	Pierre Gasly	FRA	Scuderia AlphaTauri Honda	1m18.535s	+0.700s	17
8	Daniel Ricciardo	AUS	McLaren F1 Team	1m18.582s	+0.747s	21
9	Kimi Raikkonen	FIN	Alfa Romeo Racing Orlen	1m18.597s	+0.762s	18
10	Sergio Perez	MEX	Red Bull Racing	1m18.606s	+0.771s	16
11	Fernando Alonso	ESP	Alpine F1 Team	1m18.662s	+0.827s	18
12	Yuki Tsunoda	JPN	Scuderia AlphaTauri Honda	1m18.673s	+0.838s	21
13	Esteban Ocon	FRA	Alpine F1 Team	1m18.700s	+0.865s	15
14	Lance Stroll	CAN	Aston Martin Cognizant Team	1m18.887s	+1.042s	18
15	George Russell	GBR	Williams Racing	1m19.005s	+1.170s	17
16	Antonio Giovinazzi	ITA	Alfa Romeo Racing Orlen	1m19.214s	+1.379s	19
17	Sebastian Vettel	GER	Aston Martin Cognizant Team	1m19.363s	+1.528s	18
18	Nicholas Latifi	CAN	Williams Racing	1m19.392s	+1.557s	16
19	Mick Schumacher	GER	Uralkali Haas F1 Team	1m19.999s	+2.164s	17
20	Nikita Mazepin	RUS	Uralkali Haas F1 Team	1m20.237s	+2.402s	15