McLaren’s Lando Norris was fastest in FP3 of the Australian Grand Prix on Saturday. PHOTO: McLaren

BRENDAN LINES APRIL 9, 2022

LANDO Norris has zeroed-in on McLaren’s Q3 aspirations finishing fastest ahead of Charles Leclerc and Sergio Perez in FP3 on Saturday.

The faster flowing Albert Park circuit suited McLaren’s set up, but it spent most of the session still hunting for speed in medium-speed corners.

Norris and teammate Daniel Ricciardo (P6) came out for their first soft tyre run with 11-minutes to go, making it top ten finishes in every session across the weekend so far.

It was more problems for Aston Martin with Vettel’s car still needing work after yesterday’s engine failure. But the teams luck went from bad to worse, when Sebastian Vettel (P19) going off into the wall at the Turn 9-10  high-speed chicane red-flagging the session for the first time, 21 minutes in.

The session was then finally red-flagged, prematurely ending the session, when Lance Stroll (P20) hit the wall at Turn 11, adding to Aston Martin’s busy afternoon to repair  both cars for the afternoon’s qualifying session. 

Fernanado Alonso (P4) entered the conversation for a Q3 appearance,  setting the early marker, the first driver to dip into the one-minute 19s, but the Alpine driver soon was surpassed by Perez on a soft-tyre run posting a 1:19.720.

Alonso remonstated going -0.060s quicker again, enough to have the French team’s garage up and about, just before the session was red-flagged by Vettel’s incident.

Lewis Hamilton continued to struggle with finding the grip going off at Turn 3  and after the restart George Russell was next to go off at Turn 4. 

Hamilton later managed to edge into the top ten but still some nine-tenths off the pace in the final sector.

After the restart, Verstappen was unable to improve on (P7) after the session restarted, the Dutchman made an error on his push lap at the final turn, the RB16 still struggling for rear-end grip in the slower corners.

He then backed out of a late soft-tyre run after a nervous moment through Turn 6, another untidy entry into Turn 1 frustrated the world champion enough to abort another run.

Alfa Romeo’s Valtteri Bottas finished P9, keeping a perfect record of top ten finishes across the weekend so far intact, while Alpha Tauri’s Yuki Tsunoda rounded-out the top ten.

Qualifying for the Australian Grand Prix begins at 4pm on Saturday.

FULL RESULTS

1	4	Lando Norris	MCLAREN MERCEDES	1:19.117	Split	12 Laps
2	16	Charles Leclerc	FERRARI	1:19.249	+0.132s	15
3	11	Sergio Perez	RED BULL RACING RBPT	1:19.265	+0.148s	17
4	14	Fernando Alonso	ALPINE RENAULT	1:19.275	+0.158s	15
5	55	Carlos Sainz	FERRARI	1:19.419	+0.302s	17
6	3	Daniel Ricciardo	MCLAREN MERCEDES	1:19.693	+0.576s	14
7	1	Max Verstappen	RED BULL RACING RBPT	1:19.809	+0.692s	16
8	44	Lewis Hamilton	MERCEDES	1:19.896	+0.779s	13
9	77	Valtteri Bottas	ALFA ROMEO FERRARI	1:20.008	+0.891s	17
10	22	Yuki Tsunoda	ALPHATAURI RBPT	1:20.071	+0.954s	12
11	63	George Russell	MERCEDES	1:20.096	+0.979s	16
12	10	Pierre Gasly	ALPHATAURI RBPT	1:20.133	+1.016s	14
13	31	Esteban Ocon	ALPINE RENAULT	1:20.205	+1.088s	14
14	47	Mick Schumacher	HAAS FERRARI	1:20.692	+1.575s	17
15	24	Zhou Guanyu	ALFA ROMEO FERRARI	1:20.836	+1.719s	16
16	23	Alexander Albon	WILLIAMS MERCEDES	1:20.958	+1.841s	16
17	20	Kevin Magnussen	HAAS FERRARI	1:21.025	+1.908s	14
18	6	Nicholas Latifi	WILLIAMS MERCEDES	1:21.050	+1.933s	14
19	18	Lance Stroll	ASTON MARTIN ARAMCO MERCEDES	1:21.636	+2.519s	11
20	5	Sebastian Vettel	ASTON MARTIN ARAMCO MERCEDES			5