Antonelli tops FP3 after Hamilton and Bearman cause red flags

Formula 1 championship leader Kimi Antonelli will head into qualifying at the Spanish Grand Prix’s challenging Madring circuit with the fastest time – following a final practice session marred by two crashes.

The Mercedes driver fended off advances by Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc to reclaim top spot after a lengthy stoppage during the middle of the practice session in Madrid.

FP3 was halted after 23 minutes when Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton locked up his front tyres into Turn 22, the final corner, bumping straight into the wall and dislocating his front wing.

Hamilton’s tap with the TecPro wall would have been relatively innocuous if he hadn’t just passed pit entry, and thus had to try and complete a full lap of the circuit on three wheels as his wing dragged on the ground and started piercing the front-right tyre.

Contrary to his team’s instructions, the seven-time world champion attempted to make it round under the red flag until he had to abandon his effort midway through at the exit of Turn 14.

The barrier repairs that followed took so long that race control decided to stop the clock at 15m38s, ensuring that there would still be a reasonable amount of time left for drivers to resume practice.

At that stage, Hamilton’s team-mate Leclerc had the fastest time to his name, a 1m33.332s that beat Antonelli’s earlier benchmark of 1m33.664s, while Hamilton was fourth behind McLaren’s Lando Norris.

After an extended delay of nearly 40 minutes as track workers realigned the barriers, action got under way for a last chance to fine tune cars set-ups ahead of qualifying.

Leclerc was the first frontrunner to embark on a hot lap, lowering his own benchmark to a 1m32.963s. That was initially faster than what Mercedes had in the tank, with Antonelli conceding three tenths, narrowly ahead of Lando Norris’ team-mate Oscar Piastri.

But on his second attempt Antonelli found a chunk of lap time to take over the lead with a 1m32.797s effort. Antonelli’s time didn’t come under threat, due to a late second red flag period for a crash by Haas driver Oliver Bearman.

In the final minute, Bearman lost the rear of his car into the Turn 10 right-hander, smacking into the concrete wall and sustaining significant damage to his car’s left-hand side. Bearman’s crash into the concrete effectively cemented Antonelli’s lead ahead of Leclerc.

After having been farther adrift on Friday, McLaren appeared to have taken a tentative step forward as Piastri and Norris sealed third and fourth, just two tenths behind Antonelli.

Oliver Bearman, Haas

Photo by: Steven Tee / LAT Images via Getty Images

Max Verstappen made a delayed start after only joining the action right before Hamilton’s red flag. The Dutchman was fifth, 0.375s behind, as Red Bull continued to struggle over the Madring circuit’s kerbs and generally lacked performance compared to its rivals.

Russell, who had to abort his pre-red flag flyer that yielded the fastest first sector time, didn’t piece together a representative lap after the stoppage either and only managed sixth, followed by the second Red Bull of Liam Lawson who made a mistake on his final flyer.

Audi’s Nico Hulkenberg was eighth after surprisingly setting the fastest first sector, only to be blocked by traffic later on in the lap.

Hamilton dropped down to ninth by the end, with Hulkenberg’s team-mate Gabriel Bortoleto rounding out the top 10.

The session ended early for Williams man Alex Albon, who tapped the wall at the start and disappeared into the garage for suspension repairs.

F1 Spanish GP results – FP3

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