The two Red Bulls, and then Alonso

In Free Practice 3, Alonso was 3rd. The superstitious will see here a ’33’, the number of wins you can achieve Fernando Alonso in F1 if he wins one more race. But for now, at jeddah that seems far from happening. The performance of Aston Martin It’s very, very good, and it’s good news for the team at Silverstone that his car remains among the best on a track full of fast straights and corners, his weak points two weeks ago in Bahrain. But red bull is on another planet. They play differently. And the clearest example is what happened in the third training session of F1 Saudi Arabian GP.

Red Bull, in another league, and behind them, a tough battle

Max Verstappen he took the lead with a 1’28″485, setting the pace on both lap attempts he made, as if his tires had never worn out. His teammate ‘Czech’ Perez He was second at 0″613. And from there, everything got tighter. Fernando Alonso is third at 0″998, in a world of red bullbut in a temporary position on the podium, with take a walk stuck in fourth place (1″024 behind the best), hamilton in 5th position (at 1″083) and Leclerc 6th at (1″103). in between Alonso, Stroll, Hamilton and Leclerca tenth that makes it clear that the battle to be first after the two Red Bulls can be exciting in today’s qualifying (6:00 pm / DAZN F1 and live on Mundo Deportivo).

Aston Martin He has the car to get back into the fight with the top four teams, but as was the case in Bahrain, in qualifying, both Ferrari and Mercedes are expected to improve.

The Ferrari is still hidden and Sainz is 10th

The Italians are especially noticeable. Leclerc was 6th on his lap at the last moment. Sainz was 10th when he encountered traffic. Ferrari chose to save the engine on Friday after reliability problems in Bahrain and after changing the combustion engine in both of its cars in this second round, too early. They were expected to take a big step forward, but again they hid in FP3 and Leclerc only came close as a last resort.

The Monegasque has 10 penalty spots for Sunday’s grid and Sainz will have to pull the ‘Prancing Horse’ car into ‘qualy’ today. When Ferrari puts all the power at the disposal of the man from Madrid, he should aim for third place despite the tenth position in this Free 3.

Alonso picked from third to 6th in the qualy

So, Alonso will have Sainz and the two Mercedes as great rivals, as Leclerc will return to the grid. The Asturian is again looking to be between third and sixth place this Sunday at a circuit where theoretically his car should be worse than in Bahrain. That’s nothing but good news for Silverstone and the ‘Nano’. The positions he gets in qualifying today will help for this Sunday’s race, where he will be looking for his second course podium in two races.

Trouble with De Vries’ machine

Nyck de Vries was unable to participate in Free Practice 3 as he had to change his engine due to a problem. The AlphaTauri team hopes that the car can be ready in time for qualifying.