June 3, 2023

The world champion and the champion team are clear favorites for pole position and the race in Montmeló

the dutch Max Verstappen (Red Bull)leader of the championship, was the fastest this Saturday, ahead of his teammate, the Mexican Sergio Perez -second in the competition, to 39 points- in the last free for the Spanish Grand Prixthe seventh of the World F1which is disputed in the circuit of Montmelo (Barcelona); where the Spanish Carlos Sainz (Ferrari) y Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin) they registered fourth and fifth, respectively, in the time table.

In the best of his 14 laps, Max Verstappen He covered -like everyone else, with a soft tire and before it started to rain- the 4,675 meters of the Barcelona track in one minute, thirteen seconds and 664 thousandths, two and a half tenths less than Checo Perez, who gave the same laps as him; in a session in which the English seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) set the third time, four tenths behind.

Sainz, sixth in the World Championship and still chasing his first podium of the season, was the fastest rider in a session marked by rain that considerably reduced the testing time on dry tyres; whose management in the race will be vital if it does not rain this Sunday. The driver from Madrid did twenty laps and in the fastest of them he was 57 hundredths of a second behind his first teammate in the F1 (in 2015 and in Red Bullactual AlphaTauri).

Fernando Alonso -which, following a sensational start to the season, with five podiums in the first six races, is third in the World Championship: 51 points behind ‘Mad Max’- registered fifth on the time table.

The Asturian double world champion gave the same laps as the number he has on his car; that is to say: fourteen. And in the fastest of them he stayed exactly six tenths of Verstappenwho had already set the best time in the two practices on Friday.

The session was interrupted for almost a quarter of an hour, with a red flag, due to the accident of the American Logan Sargeant -without physical consequences and at the beginning of it-, who lost control of his Williams in the last of the 14 corners of a track that modified, compared to last year, that area of ​​its layout: eliminating the chicane and replacing it with another long turn to the right.

Since the sky threatened a storm that did not arrive, but it did begin to drip; most did not enter the track until with twenty minutes to go, already with intermissions, they did the English Lando Norris (McLaren) and the Ferrari of Sainz and his partner, the Monegasque Charles Leclercwho would register seventh on the time table -like the rest, with his dry time trial-, behind the other Mercedesthe English George Russell.

Alonso -in a second youth at 41- he went for a spin at the end on intermediates, before switching back to softs; the same thing that the majority did during the last minutes, in which there was more to lose than to win, for which reason nothing changed in the time table of a session, which for the reasons outlined, was practically inconsequential. As indicated by Verstappen himself, who commented on the radio to his team that “it did not” make “sense” to be shooting in those conditions.