Charles Leclerc was the fastest in the last free practice of the Spanish Grand Prix on Saturday. He overtook his championship rival Max Verstappen. Lance Stroll settled for 16th place, Nicholas Latifi finished 18th.
The Monegasque driver recorded an unparalleled time of 1min 19s 772/1000 in the last 60 minutes practice session.
He is 72 milliseconds ahead of his Dutch rival, and the two will battle it out for pole position in a matter of minutes.
But Mercedes-Benz doesn’t go away. George Russell finished the session in 3rd place, 148 thousandths of a second behind Leclerc and his teammate Lewis Hamilton finished just behind, in 4th place, 23 hundredths behind Leclerc.
Carlos Sainz Jr., fifth fastest, inherited a new chassis for this session after a fuel system malfunction was spotted by Ferrari on Friday.
Lance Stroll recorded a time of 1: 21.520, good for 16th place, aboard the B version of the Aston Martin AMR22. His teammate Sebastian Vettel did a bit better, finishing in 12th place in 1: 20.944 (+1.172).
At Williams FW44, Toronto’s Nicholas Latifi finished last in the session with the drivers with a lap.
He set his best lap at 1: 22.419 (+2.6). His 18th spot was not good for the qualifying session.
His teammate Alex Albon finished 17th (+1.8), but cut 8 tenths from the Canadian season, whose days seemed to be numbered already on the British team.
The session was marked by two outbreaks of fire in the pits.
Pierre Gasly’s Alpha Tauri didn’t complete lap time. It got stuck in the garage after the heat shield on its powertrain failed, then Mick Schumacher’s Haas returned to the fire pits after four laps.
Due to a failure in his right rear brake system, his team was forced to turn off the fire extinguishers when they returned to the pits.
The qualifying session will begin at 10 am EDT.
Source: Radio-Canada
