Alonso finishes eleventh.
Sergio Pérez heads up the third and final free practice session of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix on the streets of Baku. The Mexican pilot has surpassed Charles Leclerc by only seventy thousandths; both start as favorites to get the pole. Verstappen and Sainz have been one step behind, but they cannot be ruled out either.
The third free practice started fifteen minutes late after a previous incident in Formula 2 where the protection barriers of the Baku circuit were damaged. Once started, the session was held without interruptions or serious incidents, which have not occurred since the beginning of the weekend.
The Mexican Sergio Pérez once again demonstrated that this is ‘his’ circuit, where he won last year and where he has an even better pace than that of Red Bull’s a priori team leader, Max Verstappen. ‘Checo’ was the fastest with a time of 1:43.170, with which he beat Charles Leclerc by 70 thousandths to lead the session.
One step behind, Verstappen stopped the clock two tenths behind the leader and Sainz four, although in reality their times are not entirely realistic. The Dutchman was hampered on his last fast lap by traffic, when he had been setting the record for the first sector. Carlos, on the other hand, complained about understeer on several occasions.
The surprise this afternoon was the McLaren, who managed to place themselves in fifth and sixth position, achieved by Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo respectively. In classification they are expected to suffer more to enter the ‘top 10’. Pierre Gasly, George Russell, Esteban Ocon and Sebastian Vettel have completed the top ten positions.
Fernando Alonso, with a lap in the last minutes of the third free practice, finished in eleventh position, also bothered by the traffic, which, like in every street circuit, is going to be crucial here too. After Alonso, Lewis Hamilton stopped the clock, whose Mercedes engine had limited performance as it already had many kilometers.
The qualifying session for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix will start this afternoon at 16:15, with a fifteen minute delay due to the quarter of an hour late that Free Practice 3 started. According to the F1 regulations, each session must be separated from the other for at least two hours.
