Verstappen leads qualifying in Miami; Sainz, 4th and Alonso, far away

They had three free training sessions to draw conclusions and prepare for classification Miami GP tonight (10:00 pm/DAZN F1). However, it seems that most drivers and teams are still lost. That’s what happened in FP3 de this Saturday due to a new asphalt that is very difficult to read, which started very ‘green’ on Friday and in the third session continued to improve at a tremendous speed. So, applying changes to cars is very complicated as it is not clear whether the improvements achieved could be due to the different asphalt conditions or a real success in the changes of settings. After the FP3 dispute, only one thing seems clear: Verstappen He is the favorite for pole position in Miami after convincingly reigning with 1’27″535.

Verstappen overtook Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) by 0″406, by 0″515 a ‘Checo’ Pérez who is still not performing at Max level on this track and needs to improve a lot in ‘qualification’ if he wants win the game again with his Red Bull teammate. Sainz was fourth at 0″590 after a good start where he overtook his teammate Charles on several occasions.

It seems Verstappen has something more than the two Ferraris, although we’ll have to wait for ‘qualifying’ to know for sure. What is clear is that Sainz is more confident and comfortable than in Baku and he can aim to break into the Top-3 ahead of a race where the red cars know they will have more humiliation than the Aston Martins.

Free Practice 3 was so unusual that Ferrari was surprised to find itself the only one to take advantage of the intermediate part of the session to make a long run that the teams were unable to do yesterday in Free Practice 2 due to an accident. said Leclerc.

Fernando Alonso, with oversteer

For his part, Fernando Alonso, who started the session in the Top-5, finished 12th, 1″083 behind the best. It is not expected that this will be his ‘qualifying’ position, as he must fight Mercedes to get into the Top-5 to take advantage of his better breakdown and race speed on Sunday to go on the podium against Ferrari. The question is finding out where Hamilton and Russell really are, again far behind in this FP3, with George in 10th place and Lewis in 13th.

In this FP3, that is Alonso ‘passed’ the times and focused more on optimizing his car, where he was not as comfortable as he would have liked in this session.

Aston Martin has applied set-up changes to its cars at night to improve their performance in slow corners (Sector 2) of Miami, where the green car was not as strong as expected on Friday. Alonso felt good on the first day, but in the last part of this FP3 he complained about oversteer, a very nervous car in a fast corner.for the Asturian to reach the ‘qualification’ without control at all, something that is not common in Spain and shows how hard it is to work for all the teams with such a ‘green’ and renewable asphalt.

Sorting can be messy

This Saturday night (10:00 pm), all doubts will be removed in a classification that seems very busy. In Free Practice 3, many cars continued to suffer whiplash and lack of grip as soon as they left the line, a very dirty place. Alonso was seen to over-brake, Hamilton went wide, Norris avoided a potentially serious accident, and many other drivers struggled to keep the car in place. Between the walls, at the top, in qualifying there can be stops, accidents and above all, a lot of traffic.

The problem that everyone faces is the doubt about how to put the soft rubber at the perfect temperature to go for the time. They hesitate whether to do one preparation lap, two or even three to warm up the tires on the unpredictable asphalt. That can cause a lot of traffic, drivers distracting others and a lot of tension in a classification that is all unknown. Of those doubts, only Max Verstappen seemed to have everything under control.