Ollie Bearman ended Free Practice 3 in a heap of carbon fibre at Turn 10, and Haas now has considerably less than an hour to work out whether he even has a car to qualify. Kimi Antonelli topped the session, as he seems contractually obliged to do these days, but nobody in the paddock will be talking about lap times when they replay this one.
The crash that actually mattered
Lewis Hamilton had already given everyone their afternoon’s viewing pleasure by nose-diving into the barrier at the final corner, and that story has been told elsewhere. What followed it, with barely a minute left on the clock, was worse for the team involved. Bearman lost his Haas through the technical second sector, spun at the apex of Turn 10, and was fired backwards into the barrier on the outside of the following left-hander. There was no wall-clipping error of judgement here, no obvious moment where he overstepped: the car simply let go, and by the time it stopped moving there was serious damage down the left-hand side of the chassis.
Haas tried to sound upbeat about it afterwards, with the team reportedly telling Bearman not to worry and that they would
“get it rebuilt”
before qualifying, as relayed by The Race. That is the kind of reassurance team principals hand out to a rattled driver regardless of how bad things actually look, and given the extent of the damage, “we’ll get it rebuilt” and “we’ll get it rebuilt in time for qualifying” are not remotely the same promise. The session ended there and then. Bearman’s crash didn’t just cost him a lap time, it cost every other team the final quarter of an hour they might have used to fine-tune a setup on a track barely anyone has raced on.
Antonelli untroubled by any of it
While Haas mechanics were presumably having a difficult afternoon, Antonelli was busy doing what he has done at pretty much every session in Madrid so far: going quickest. He carried his form from Friday’s FP2 straight into Saturday, eventually setting a 1m 32.797s with five minutes left, enough to beat Charles Leclerc by just over a tenth. The championship leader now goes into qualifying having topped two of the three practice sessions at a circuit that is, in theory, unknown territory for everyone. In practice, Mercedes seem to have worked it out rather faster than the rest.
Leclerc, for his part, had been the long-time pacesetter before Hamilton’s crash interrupted proceedings, and he remained Antonelli’s closest challenger once the session resumed, eventually settling for second. Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris rounded out the top four for McLaren, with Norris in particular making the most of what little track time he actually got. He had lost almost the entirety of FP2 to a gearbox failure, a problem McLaren scrambled to fix overnight, and here he was inside two tenths of the session leader on barely any laps. Whatever excuse McLaren might reach for if qualifying goes badly, a lack of raw pace won’t be one of them.
Verstappen quietly getting on with it
Max Verstappen completed only seven laps all session but still managed fifth, more than seven tenths clear of teammate Liam Lawson. Given Verstappen’s own admission that Red Bull isn’t in any title fight this year, seven laps and a solid fifth is about as much drama as anyone should expect from him this weekend, which after the fireworks elsewhere on track is almost a relief.
Two red flags, one very short session
It took five minutes before a single car left the pits, which tells you everything about how little anyone trusted this new street circuit before qualifying forced their hand. Hamilton’s crash then ate 39 minutes of track time as the barrier at the final corner had to be repaired, with race control pausing the clock entirely rather than letting the session bleed away while marshals worked. Bearman’s crash in the final minute meant the session simply never restarted. Combined, the two incidents chewed through roughly half of what should have been an hour’s running, on a weekend where every extra lap of data was meant to be precious.
Alex Albon didn’t even get that far. The Williams driver glanced the wall exiting the penultimate corner and broke a rear track rod, leaving him without a single timed lap all session, the only driver in that unfortunate position.
Full FP3 Classification
| Pos | Driver | Team | Time/Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kimi Antonelli | Mercedes | 1m 32.797s |
| 2 | Charles Leclerc | Ferrari | +0.166s |
| 3 | Oscar Piastri | McLaren | +0.189s |
| 4 | Lando Norris | McLaren | +0.236s |
| 5 | Max Verstappen | Red Bull Racing | +0.375s |
| 6 | George Russell | Mercedes | +0.702s |
| 7 | Liam Lawson | Red Bull Racing | +1.105s |
| 8 | Nico Hulkenberg | Audi | +1.136s |
| 9 | Lewis Hamilton | Ferrari | +1.487s |
| 10 | Gabriel Bortoleto | Audi | +1.491s |
| 11 | Franco Colapinto | Alpine | +1.549s |
| 12 | Esteban Ocon | Haas F1 Team | +1.633s |
| 13 | Oliver Bearman | Haas F1 Team | +1.684s |
| 14 | Arvid Lindblad | Racing Bulls | +1.708s |
| 15 | Yuki Tsunoda | Racing Bulls | +1.768s |
| 16 | Pierre Gasly | Alpine | +2.174s |
| 17 | Fernando Alonso | Aston Martin | +2.223s |
| 18 | Carlos Sainz | Williams | +2.667s |
| 19 | Lance Stroll | Aston Martin | +2.773s |
| 20 | Sergio Perez | Cadillac | +3.644s |
| 21 | Valtteri Bottas | Cadillac | +3.873s |
| 22 | Alexander Albon | Williams | No time |
Qualifying starts at 14:00 UTC, check the calendar for your local time, and Haas now has to decide whether Bearman even makes it to the grid for that session with a working car. Everyone else gets to go racing on a track that has already claimed two cars and a barrier in the space of one practice session. Madring, it turns out, doesn’t need experience to punish people. It just needs a weekend.
