Defending champion Max Verstappen topped the schedules on the final day of Bahrain’s pre-season testing, capping the time-magic attack on Saturday.
Times rolled back as the sun set on the rocks, and the leaderboard was constantly swaying. Leaving a late red flag caused by Valtteri Bottas stopping 20 minutes later for his last attack – during which Verstappen made a 360-degree spin in the final corner before setting the fastest lap and improving to a final benchmark of 1m 31.720s, comfortably faster across the three days in Bahrain.
Live coverage: Day 3 of pre-season testing in Bahrain
That left former leader Charles Leclerc in second, 0.695 seconds behind Ferrari, while Fernando Alonso Alonso in P3 set his fastest lap in the final minutes.
And so Mercedes’ George Russell was reduced to P4 – teammate Lewis Hamilton is 17th with 78 laps in the morning.
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With 40 minutes left, Bottas shot P5 before stopping at Turn 8 on a cooldown lap, triggering the second red flag of the day. The Finn concluded a promising day for the team that started Zhou Guanyu (P11) with 82 laps before lunch.
AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda set off with Russell for the evening – after teammates Pierre Gasly (P12) and Hamilton set a precedent in the morning.
Morning Leader Sergio Perez He finished seventh overall, ahead of Haas player Mick Schumacher.
Schumacher pulled off the first red flag of the day – very briefly – when he came off the last corner after two hours (39 laps) of running in the afternoon. He was in P8 when the square flag flew, but will have an extra 2 hours of running into the night while Haas makes up for that time Lost Thursday morning.
Lando Norris upgraded himself to P9 quite late, and with over 80 laps on the board, he managed his highest mileage in the three days – in The absence of Daniel Ricciardohis marginalization with Covid-19.
Aston Martin driver Sebastian Vettel enjoyed a productive evening of running, over 80 laps en route to P10.
In P13 (behind Gasly) Carlos Sainz was Ferrari’s morning runner, a 68 lap number that led him to declare that the Scuderia had “accomplishment” Their testing program is satisfactory.
Fourteenth-placed Alex Albon had just 18 laps on Sakhir in the car on Saturday afternoon, and Williams returned morning driver Nicholas Latifi (15) to the cockpit to take his total to 124.
With Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll number 16 and Hamilton 17, Haas’ Kevin Magnussen rounded out the standings after starting the day one hour earlier – the team was able to catch up on his missed run, with Schumacher set to turn around until Saturday night.
the two seas It will host the first round of the 2022 Formula 1 World Championship Where the efforts of the teams in preparing their new breed of machines will be realized. Who will hit the ground running – and who will be behind – when the lights go out on March 20?
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