Piastri dominates final Bahrain GP practice
Formula 1

Piastri dominates final Bahrain GP practice

by Matt Beer
2 min read

Oscar Piastri had a huge margin over his Formula 1 rivals in another McLaren-dominated practice session for the Bahrain Grand Prix.

Practice three is not the most relevant session at Sakhir, given how much hotter the conditions in it were than what's expected in the evening qualifying session that's coming up.

But that's just as well for everyone not in a McLaren, with Charles Leclerc's Ferrari the only rival car within a second of Piastri's 1m31.646s benchmark.

Even Piastri's team-mate Lando Norris was six tenths of a second off that, though Norris had compromised himself by going wide on his first flying lap on his final set of soft tyres and did his time later in that run.

Leclerc's late jump to third pushed the Mercedes of George Russell and Kimi Antonelli down to fourth and fifth, Russell reporting "I'd probably go as far as to say that's the least amount of grip I've ever had in an F1 car" as he returned to the pits at the end of a run that included a spin out of the Turn 10 left-hander onto the back straight.

The second Ferrari of Lewis Hamilton was 0.6s and seven places away from Leclerc in 10th.

Max Verstappen was only eighth and not even the fastest driver in the Red Bull family, with Isack Hadjar's Racing Bulls one place ahead and both beaten by the sixth-placed Alpine of Pierre Gasly.

But Verstappen's team-mate Yuki Tsunoda fared much worse, his messy second weekend at Red Bull continuing as he failed to put together an error-free flying lap on softs and was slowest of all.

Tsunoda was even behind the Sauber of Nico Hulkenberg, which stopped on track halfway through the hour when holding eighth place.

Results

1 Oscar Piastri (McLaren), 1m31.646s
2 Lando Norris (McLaren), +0.668s
3 Charles Leclerc (Ferrari), +0.834s
4 George Russell (Mercedes), +1.181s
5 Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes), +1.270s
6 Pierre Gasly (Alpine), 1.328s
7 Isack Hadjar (Racing Bulls), +1.377s
8 Max Verstappen (Red Bull), +1.381s
9 Carlos Sainz (Williams), +1.446s
10 Lewis Hamilton (Ferrari), +1.465s
11 Esteban Ocon (Haas), +1.594s
12 Jack Doohan (Alpine), +1.701s
13 Liam Lawson (Racing Bulls), +1.724s
14 Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin), +1.902s
15 Alex Albon (Williams), +2.107s
16 Ollie Bearman (Haas), +2.689s
17 Lance Stroll (Aston Martin), +2.717s
18 Gabriel Bortoleto (Sauber), +2.872s
19 Nico Hulkenberg (Sauber), +2.990s
20 Yuki Tsunoda (Red Bull), +3.319s

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