A lot of rain arrives as expected on Saturday in Montreal and given that the conditions will be absolutely wet also in qualifying, in the third free practice session all the riders worked hard without sparing themselves. The ranking, however, speaks for itself, two pilots showed that they clearly have something more than the others, with Max Verstappen finishing in first position with an advantage of around 3 tenths over Charles Leclerc. Behind them, however, a chasm of more than 1 second opens up compared to the pursuers. Carlos Sainz had also found a time in line with Verstappen and Leclerc but then complicated his life with a bad accident in corner 1 braking.
Between Verstappen and Leclerc a lot depends on how wet it is
Following the evolution of times and behavior of the cars during the session, we noticed some interesting trends. In more marked wet conditions, with lots of water on the track, Verstappen’s Red Bull had more than a few difficulties in making the rear end of the car work properly, especially when exiting corners and in traction. In these conditions, Leclerc showed excellent stability and a high level of grip, comforting news for the fans of the red, also considering the extremely low temperatures on the track. Things started to reverse when the rain came down and the track started to get less wet. Under these conditions, the rear of the RB19 gradually began to strengthen, while that of the SF23 weakened, so much so that in the best lap, whose data we will analyze below, it is precisely Leclerc who has to manage a rear that is not entirely solid, at the contrary to Verstappen who finds so much grip out of corners, so much as to allow him to be more aggressive on the accelerator and to find better traction.
From the data we can see a SF23 that suffers a bit from a lack of downforce when lateral loads increase, such as at turn 5, but which still defends itself excellently under braking and when cornering, with excellent top speeds. The greatest difficulty for Leclerc compared to Verstappen appears precisely in traction, where the Monegasque struggles to get back on the gas early and where the gap is built in favor of the Dutch. It has also been seen that Ferrari seems to need a few more laps to get the intermediate tires into the right temperature windowan aspect that will be crucial for strategic choices in qualifying.
Show Qualification
The qualifying session that lies ahead looks really interesting. We obviously have no idea how much margin each driver really kept in his pocket in these third free practice, but, given the conditions, it seems realistic to predict a fight between Verstappen and the two Ferraris for pole position. Aston Martin and Mercedes do not seem comfortable in these conditions and there will hardly be any major changes in favor of the wet, given the expectation of a dry race. Let’s completely exclude it for now a Perez drifting on this track, already yesterday in the dry and even worse today in the wet. We’ll see if the Checo will be able to find the crux of the skein for qualification, even if, at the moment, it seems very unlikely. A session is therefore expected that could reserve interesting twists with the perception that both Verstappen, Leclerc and Carlos Sainz will race with the desire to demonstrate their talent in these difficult conditions, without making calculations of any kind, with all three without that much to lose actually. Recalling that Hamilton and Alonso, in any case, will certainly not stand by and watch. All we have to do is enjoy what is a candidate to be a beautiful show.
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