F1 | Bahrain, Free Practice 3: it's Sainz who warms up the Ferrari fans

Ferrari raises its head with Carlos Sainz. At the end of the third free practice session of the Bahrain GP, ​​the Spaniard achieved the best time with 1'30″824 obtained on the soft tyres. The Cavallino team continued to work on the setup of the SF-24 before allowing the two drivers to look for performance on the flying lap. The Madrilenian seemed more at ease than his teammate Charles Leclerc who finished in fourth place, 270 thousandths of a second behind after a couple of mistakes in the first part of the Sakhir track. It's curious that Sainz put the red ahead of everyone despite not taking the best time in any of the three sectors, giving the feeling that the Cavallino wall must have found a good compromise, after suffering yesterday in the first section.

Another Spaniard appears behind Carlos: Fernando Alonso has found the key to extracting the true potential of the Aston Martin which seems decidedly more competitive than what we observed in the tests the other week. The Asturian with 1'30″965 came within 141 thousandths of the SF-24, while Lance Stroll with the second verdona is only tenth, four tenths behind his captain.

And Red Bull? Max Verstappen is third: the Dutchman did not break through the 1'31″ barrier, still suffering from small set-up problems. The Milton Keynes team was the only one to start the session with a Hard train with the two drivers , before switching to the softs like everyone else. Max is still hiding, does he have any small setup problems to resolve? We'll know shortly, but Sergio Perez, eighth, continued to complain about the downshifting as Verstappen did yesterday.

Lando Norris with McLaren is close to Leclerc's Ferrari in fifth place, followed by George Russell in sixth with the first Mercedes. The Englishman remained trapped in the grip of the papaya cars as Oscar Piastri was seventh, 20 thousandths behind the star. The feeling is that Brixworth's PU had a more advanced map than the others. Lewis Hamilton, at the top on Friday, is only 12th with a more nervous W15: did he have more fuel? In the first part of the session he did a micro long run with the reds: it seems we changed the height from the ground so as not to risk ruining the board during the race weekend.

The surprise in the top 10 is Nico Hulkenberg who put Haas in ninth place, while Kevin Magnussen didn't go beyond 14th place. The VF-24 will no longer be the last of the lot. More was expected from Racing Bull in 11th with Daniel Ricciardo and Yuki Tsunoda 13th. The Japanese sought performance more than many other opponents so it is difficult to evaluate the true potential of the Faenza car.

Williams is 15th with Alexander Albon, while Logan Sargeant has slipped to 19th place. The American ended up in the sandwich of the two Alpines: Esteban Ocon was 18th and Pierre Gasly even last. The two Frenchmen did not expect to have to deal with an A524 that seems like a bad car that will have to suffer until Melbourne when the first update arrives.

The Saubers are a little better with Guanyu Zhou ahead of Valtteri Bottas: the C44 also still needs fine-tuning…