BREAKING:FP3: Piastri Leads the Pack in Final Practice Before… read more
Oscar Piastri topped the timesheets in the third and final practice session ahead of the 2025 Spanish Grand Prix, reinforcing McLaren’s strong form. The Australian put in a stellar lap late in the session to outpace his teammate Lando Norris and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, underlining McLaren as the team to beat going into Qualifying.
The session began at a leisurely pace, with Franco Colapinto being the first driver to venture out on track. The rookie was making up for lost time after a hydraulic issue curtailed his running in FP1. He was soon joined by fellow newcomer Gabriel Bortoleto and Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso, who took time to acknowledge the home crowd during a slow warm-up lap designed to prepare his tyres.
As track temperatures remained slightly cooler than previous sessions, Yuki Tsunoda briefly claimed the fastest time with a 1m 14.851s on medium compound tyres. However, his stint at the top was short-lived as Norris went three-tenths faster shortly afterward. Despite Tsunoda’s early pace, he complained about a lack of grip, noting that his Red Bull was “sliding a lot.”
Carlos Sainz soon joined the fray on soft tyres, further lowering the benchmark as the majority of the field began pushing for more representative lap times. Max Verstappen, however, struggled with grip and found himself trailing behind the lead Williams during his early laps, expressing frustration over the car’s balance.
George Russell took advantage of the soft tyres to go quickest by nearly half a second at the session’s midpoint, showing promising one-lap pace in his Mercedes. Meanwhile, rookie mistakes punctuated the session, with Liam Lawson and Ollie Bearman both kicking up gravel after running wide during flying laps, forcing them to retreat to the pits.
In the closing 15 minutes, attention turned to Qualifying simulations. Norris attempted to better Verstappen’s time but encountered oversteer at Turn 9, forcing him to abort his lap. His race engineer later cited porpoising as a contributing factor. Piastri, by contrast, executed a clean and precise run to clock a blistering 1m 12.387s — the fastest lap of the weekend so far — placing him comfortably ahead of his teammate by over half a second.
Verstappen attempted a late push to climb the leaderboard but could only manage the fifth-fastest time, just behind Russell’s Mercedes. Behind them, Isack Hadjar continued to impress by finishing sixth, followed by Kimi Antonelli and a well-received Alonso in eighth. Rounding out the top ten were Lewis Hamilton and Lawson in the Racing Bull.
As the session concluded, the field looked closely matched heading into Qualifying, but McLaren’s dominant pace — particularly through Piastri — has made them the standout performers heading into the decisive afternoon session at 16:00 local time.
