Given all the drama and concern off the track – and not far from it – yesterday, not much attention was given to what happened during the first two practice sessions on Friday. It was a solid day for Scuderia Ferrari with Charles Leclerc – last weekend’s winner – topping both sessions, although Max Verstappen was not far behind. Mercedes, meanwhile, continued to struggle for pace compared to their rivals.
The final practice session took place today in the blazing hot sunshine so is not really representative to the conditions we will see at night for the qualifying session and the race on Sunday, but it was still crucial to the teams as they step up their one-lap pace preparations.
It was an exclusive battle between the F1-75 Ferrari cars at the front in the early stages of practice, and Charles Leclerc lit up the screens purple to go fastest, with Carlos Sainz 0.184s off. A 1:30.139 was the new time to beat. Max Verstappen’s respons came just a few minutes later as he completed two laps on the softs and duly went fastest overall, usurping Charles Leclerc. He was 0.371s faster than the Ferrari.
The Maranello team focused on the long run simulations in the second part of the final free practice session at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit in order to make up the time lost in FP2 yesterday, when Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz were not able to complete to race pace sims as both hit the wall and could not return to the track. The long run pace of the F1-75 cars looked very competitive, with Charles able to run in mid 1,34’s, but we should not forget that the conditions encountered in this practice session were different to what we will see later today in qualifying.
Charles Leclerc did save the best for the last in this FP3 session and knocked Max Verstappen off top spot with his very last lap in the final moments. The Monegasque driver was 0.033s ahead of the Red Bull. This’ll be a hat-trick of fastest practice times for Charles and Ferrari!
With the session completed, some of the drivers decide to take the opportunity to perform some practice starts.
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