Major statement by McLaren amidst cheating claims, Piastri obliterates the field!

In the first ten minutes only a handful of drivers had made their way around the track, usually lapping decisively slower, with Gabriel Bortoleto leading Franco Colapinto, Lance Stroll, Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon in the top five.

Yuki Tsunoda then took the top spot from Ocon, as Norris then pipped the Japanese driver by three tenths, with Tsunoda reporting his lack of grip issues were continuing.

Sainz on a set of softs clocked in a 1:14.124s, and took P1 ahead of his former McLaren teammate, with Liam Lawson leaping to P3 and demoting Tsunoda to P4.

With Lewis Hamilton, Oscar Piastri and Max Verstappen taking to the track FP3 was effectively starting as all the major players set out to look for the fastest possible time ahead of qualifying.

Charles Leclerc beat Sainz’ time by less than two tenths on a fresh set of softs, with Piastri placing third on the medium tyre ahead of his teammate, whilst Hamilton’s first push lap, on mediums, yielded decent pace, with the Briton coming within 0.121s of the Monegasque.

As Verstappen complained of a lack of rear grip, Norris beat Leclerc, but George Russell brought down the target time to the low 1:13’s with a 1:13.396s. Verstappen’s effort placed him just behind Sainz, in P6,

Piastri went to the garage as he reported a blunt object on his left leg, on his seat.

Leclerc then went for another push lap, which, despite a marginal improvement provided little else, with the Monegasque coming within almost five tenths of Russell. Verstappen also found little gains in his following push lap, but enough to take over P5 from Sainz.

Antonelli then took P2 from Norris and behind his Mercedes teammate, albeit 0.492 adrift.

As Alonso demoted Verstappen to P7, Piastri struggled with oversteer coming out of Turn 2, and after closing a not-so-great run, he failed to improve and remained in P12.

Verstappen then set purple sectors 1 and 3 and improved his middle sector to pip Russell in P1 by 0.021s. As Norris tried to beat the Dutchman had to take the run off on the outside of Turn 9 as he overshot the exit of the corner.

Norris improved on Verstappen’s efforts by more than four tenths. Leclerc then beat Verstappen’s time to place P3. But Piastri set a blistering lap that brought down Norris’ time by over half a second.