Mercedes Formula 1 driver George Russell set the fastest time in final practice for the 2026 Barcelona Grand Prix as a red flag disrupted the session.<\/p>\n
Russell led FP3 with a time of 1m15.679s while McLaren’s Oscar Piastri was second, two tenths off. Charles Leclerc was three hundredths further back for Ferrari in third.<\/p>\n
The session was punctuated by a red flag when, with 25 minutes remaining, Valtteri Bottas beached his Cadillac on the exit of Turn 10.<\/p>\n
Cadillac – which encountered brake issues in Monaco – immediately began investigating the issue as Bottas said he had “lost his brake pedal”.<\/p>\n
The session resumed with just over 15 minutes left, and the qualifying runs came towards the chequered flag. Before that, action was sporadic given the intense heat of the Spanish afternoon.<\/p>\n
FP2 pacesetter Lando Norris (whose fastest FP2 time was two tenths faster than this FP3 benchmark) was fourth, 0.002s off Leclerc, while Lewis Hamilton was another four tenths away for Ferrari in fifth.<\/p>\n
Red Bull’s Max Verstappen was just behind Hamilton in sixth.<\/p>\n
Kimi Antonelli settled for seventh having aborted two late push laps due to traffic. He ranted about the traffic on the radio only to receive a swift rebuttal from race engineer Peter Bonnington: “Unfortunately I don’t release those cars out of the garage, mate.”<\/p>\n
Isack Hadjar complained of understeer as he put his Red Bull a second off the pace in eighth. Nico Hulkenberg was ninth for Audi and Arvid Lindblad rounded out the top 10 for Racing Bulls.<\/p>\n
There were few surprises outside the top 10 with Alpine, Haas and Williams behind midfield rivals Audi and Racing Bulls, Cadillac further down, and Aston Martin rounding out the order.<\/p>\n
FP3 times<\/p>\n
1 George Russell (Mercedes) 1m15.679s
2 Oscar Piastri (McLaren) +0.214s
3 Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) +0.243s
4 Lando Norris (McLaren) +0.246s
5 Lewis Hamilton (Ferrari) +0.702s
6 Max Verstappen (Red Bull) +0.755s
7 Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes) +0.821s
8 Isack Hadjar (Red Bull) +1.005s
9 Nico Hulkenberg (Audi) +1.282s
10 Arvid Lindblad (Racing Bulls) +1.341s
11 Gabriel Bortoleto (Audi) +1.348s
12 Liam Lawson (Racing Bulls) +1.645s
13 Pierre Gasly (Alpine) +1.904s
14 Franco Colapinto (Alpine) +1.946s
15 Carlos Sainz (Williams) +2.051s
16 Esteban Ocon (Haas) +2.361s
17 Ollie Bearman (Haas) +2.712s
18 Alex Albon (Williams) +2.733s
19 Sergio Perez (Cadillac) +3.012s
20 Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin) +3.817s
21 Valtteri Bottas (Cadillac) +4.283s
22 Lance Stroll (Aston Martin) +4.424s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mercedes Formula 1 driver George Russell set the fastest time in final practice for the 2026 Barcelona Grand…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":734582,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-734581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=734581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734581\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/734582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=734581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=734581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=734581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}