[Gli indizi delle PL3] – As has become customary this year, the prediction for the qualification at the end of the third free practice session is totally open. Red Bull takes advantage of the high temperatures, finds an excellent car balance, starts to raise the engine revs and goes very fast. Mercedes responds with Hamilton on Verstappen’s levels, but certainly, at least apparently, without the reassuring margin that it seemed to have on the first day. We compared the two canceled laps of Verstappen and Hamilton as their best, to try and draw some more conclusions.
In the first sector Verstappen is extremely concrete, both in curve 1 and in the section of the snake with an evidently responsive front of the car and a suspension package now able to absorb the roughness of the asphalt and load transfers absolutely at its best. The central sector is instead in favor of Hamilton, who finds more than anything else a lot of traction at the beginning of the long straight, with a flicker that seems the result of a particularly full delivery by the Mercedes Power Unit. The third sector, however, is again in favor of Verstappen who finds more grip and more speed in almost every corner, even reaching +6 km / h at the very difficult penultimate corner, also a sign of better control of the tire temperature.
The high temperatures seem a great ally of the Austrian team and the challenge for the pole promises to be very tight. Ferrari for its part appears halfway. On the one hand Leclerc struggles to make the tires last for the whole lap, with the rears that tend to overheat too penalizing in the last sector, on the other Sainz makes a masterpiece, hitting a perfect lap, and obviously succeeding to mitigate the problem much better. We compared his lap with Norris’ to see the differences between Ferrari and Mclaren in the fight for the third force.
You immediately notice a particularly perky SF21 in the extension. It seems that a slightly less downforce approach has been chosen on car number 55, to try to keep tire operating temperatures in balance with high ambient temperatures. A setup that is usually very profitable if you can get it to work perfectly and very penalizing otherwise, and in this case it seems that Sainz has found the perfect key, along with a power delivery curve that continues to prove improved with the new. hybrid system. The questions for the qualification related to the red are whether Sainz will be able to repeat a performance as effective as the one seen in free practice and if Leclerc will find the square of the circle at the climax. We will have the answers very soon.
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