Japanese Grand Prix – Free Practice 3: On a dry track, Verstappen sets the fastest time ahead of Ferrari

While AlphaTauri and Alpine jointly waited until 2 a.m., French time, to officially announce Pierre Gasly’s arrival at Alpine and Nyck de Vries’ return to Formula 1, the drivers seemed eager to compete on dry track conditions.

As soon as the traffic light turned green, it was a rare sight to witness as almost all 20 single-seaters were already entering the track after 30 seconds. It was Sainz (Ferrari), Verstappen (Red Bull), and Russell (Mercedes) who were the first to set a time.

Latifi, who made a mistake in his trajectory yesterday, claiming a strange behavior from the Williams, was the first to cause a yellow flag this morning by taking a wide line in a corner. The track is not very rubbered in, so we need to find new braking points and many drivers are on track. Naturally, errors were frequent this morning in FP3.

After 20 minutes of the session, both Red Bull drivers and both McLarens are in the lead, but with a significant performance gap. On soft tires, Verstappen sets a time of 1:32.050. Perez is far behind, 1.186 seconds behind his teammate. The McLarens are over two seconds off the pace. The lap times are far from representative at this stage.

The two Ferraris took the lead in the rankings after 25 minutes of the session on soft tires, with Sainz ahead of Leclerc by 4 tenths on soft tires for both drivers. On medium tires, the first F1 cars are the Alpines of Alonso and Ocon, in 5th and 6th place.

The drivers have driven a lot and have gradually improved. Verstappen set the fastest time at the very end of the session, just like Alonso, who moved up to 4th position ahead of Perez in the second Red Bull.

The Mercedes seem less in shape than in previous Grand Prix races. Russell and Hamilton are more than 8 tenths behind on equivalent tires. Norris is in 8th place in the first McLaren, ahead of Ocon’s Alpine. Stroll with the Aston Martin completes the Top 10.

Pierre Gasly is dead last this morning. The French driver is struggling to find performance in the AlphaTauri, even though he was announced as leaving for Alpine a few hours ago.

A few yellow flags were to be reported, but no accidents or track exits came to disrupt this session. All the drivers completed at least 20 laps during this session to prepare for the dry qualifying session that will also take place.

The weather forecast is still unstable for tomorrow, and the odds of rain during the race are 90%.

The results of Free Practice 3 of the Japanese Grand Prix 2022