The third session of Free Practice began at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in Mexico City ahead of Qualifying in the 20th round of the F1 2024 championship.
FP3 became an important session for the teams to develop their performance due to the lack of action on a troubled Friday full of red flags. George Russell and Carlos Sainz led FP1 and FP2 respectively.
With ten minutes gone into the session, Verstappen’s 1:18.329s was the fastest time clocked so far on the table, despite the Dutchman’s report on the radio, “I have no rear grip to be honest, low speed mainly.” Just after that, the Mercedes drove out on track to sandwich the Red Bull, as Russell went fastest and Hamilton took P3, as all three drivers were racing on soft tyres.
Hamilton went fastest just before the Ferrari drivers drove out on track with 45 minutes to go into the session to take P1 and P2, Sainz being the quickest. As Piastri and Norris got out the garages on red Pirellis, the #81 challenger only managed to score P5, as the Briton snatched a record on sector 2 to finally line in third following the Ferraris, 0.077s slower than Leclerc.
The circuit erupted when after 20 minutes of action, Sergio Pérez got out on track just as a yellow flag was triggered due to Lawson’s RB VCARB getting stuck in the middle of the track on turn 16, with no further incident happening, allowing the session to be green flagged.
Pérez lap on the soft compound allowed him to sit P7 among his colleagues, after finishing FP1 in P10 and FP2, P9.
When the clock marked halfway into the session, the Top 10 read Sainz and Leclerc with Ferrari at the front, followed by Norris, Hamilton, Russell, Magnussen, Hülkenberg, Pérez, Piastri and Verstappen.
“The brakes don’t feel great today, they feel numb, especially into turns 1 and 4, struggling to stop it at the end of braking,” said Nico Hülkenberg on the radio.
Carlos Sainz drove off the track at turn 15 and then came back in ahead of Piastri’s McLaren, provoking the Australian’s displeasure, “Typical Carlos,” he said.
With 40 minutes down, Yuki Tsunoda drove a 1:17.834s lap in mediums to sit P3. Ferrari showed its potential all through the session as Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc constantly swapped P1 between them, with less than a hundredth of a second of difference in their lap times. An impressive Colapinto drove into P5 in spite of reporting: “I hit the floor quite hard on the exit of turn 3.”
With 15 minutes to go, the teams went out on track with new soft Pirellis to begin practicing flying laps for Qualifying time. Regardless of Verstappen going fastest, Norris and Piastri took the top of the timesheet by more than half a second ahead of the Red Bull driver [The Kiwi P1], as Hamilton raced 0.057s slower than the current World Champion. As the Ferraris waited for the last ten minutes of the session to go out on track, Sainz went third fastest, and Leclerc was P6 behind the 39-year-old.
When Mercedes informed the Briton of the pace of his flying lap, the 7-times WDC exclaimed, “That was a decent lap, they are **** quick,” as Verstappen continued complaining about the grip of the RB20, despite some changes made through FP3 to his car: “Ah, this doesn’t ***** work, there’s no grip, front and rear.”
Time in FP3 ran out and the grid order marked Piastri, Norris, Sainz, Verstappen, Hamilton, Leclerc, Tsunoda, Russell, Magnussen, and Lawson in P10.
Albon, Bottas, Colapinto, Pérez, Alonso, Hülkenberg, Stroll, Ocon, Zhou and Gasly completed the table.
Qualifying is set to start at 3:00 p.m. local time in México City.
