Alonso finished sixth and Sainz seventh in a wet session.
Yesterday’s calm on the track during the first and second practice sessions, where Ferrari was the absolute leader, was interrupted this Saturday with Free Practice 3 that went through water. Canadian Nicholas Latifi set the fastest time with a good lap in the closing minutes of the session, beating Charles Leclerc.
Leclerc and his partner, Carlos Sainz, were the first to go out on the track with extreme rain tires with the aim of learning about these conditions, but without risking, avoiding making mistakes that could jeopardize their participation in the classification, where there is also possibility that the track is wet.
Fernando Alonso, after only eight minutes of session, risked mounting intermediate tires on a very wet track, to learn for qualifying with mixed conditions. His first times were not good at all, in fact Leclerc’s best time at that time, 1: 43.364, was five seconds better than that of the Asturian.
On his second lap with intermediates, Alonso cut Leclerc’s time and took third, two and a half seconds behind the Monegasque. The rain increased and the Spaniard returned to the pits, but he would come out again later, always with intermediate rubber, which allowed him to stay among the top finishers.
The two-time champion was on the verge of finishing second in this session, but he was prevented by the improvement of the track after a red flag caused by an accident by Sebastian Vettel. After the restart, Canadian Nicholas Latifi took advantage of the fact that the track had improved to set a best time of 1:41.480, with which he beat Leclerc by six tenths and his teammate Alexander Albon by nine.
Max Verstappen finished fourth, with George Russell fifth and Fernando Alonso sixth. Carlos Sainz was seventh in this unrepresentative session.
Qualifying for the Hungarian GP will start at 4:00 p.m. this Saturday and the teams predict that they will find a track that is still wet, which may cause us to see unexpected results… as, for example, happened a few months ago in Canada.
