#F1 2022 Pre-Season Test, Day 3: @LewisHamilton quickest in disrupted final day.

Hamilton quickest – Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton was the quickest on the final day of pre-season testing on a day, which saw five red flags hit the morning session, and sole-tyre supplier Pirelli running a wet-weather test in the afternoon.

Hamilton set purple sectors with a very late effort of a 1:19.138 to put the Silver Arrows on top of the time-sheets, whilst team-mate George Russell who was fastest in the morning running, ended the final day second.

The morning saw five stoppages with the first red flag triggered for BWT Alpine F1 Team’s Fernando Alonso, with thick smoke pouring out his Renault-powered A522 racer. The Enstone-French alliance stating a premature end to pre-season testing due to a hydraulics issue.

Scuderia AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly also suffered a crash after that, whilst Alfa Romeo Racing ORLEN’s Guanyu Zhou was hit with a pair of stoppages in his C42, bringing further pauses to proceedings – before Aston Martin’s Sebastian Vettel was brought to a halt in the final five minutes of the morning due to an oil leak and the resulting fire from his AMR22. Alpine, AlphaTauri, Aston Martin and Haas all missed the afternoon thanks to their reliability problems.

The aforementioned Russell completed 66 tours to lead the morning session (dropping to P2 as Hamilton posted his benchmark) before Red Bull Racing’s Sergio Perez moved up to third with a late effort.

This dropped the Mexican’s team-mate Max Verstappen to fourth in the classifications, with Vettel setting a lap-time worthy to jump into the top five before his Mercedes-powered AMR22 went up in a plume of smoke.

The low humming sound of trucks hit the Circuit De Barcelona-Catalunya in the build-up to the afternoon session, with the tankers dropping water for all ten teams to test Pirelli’s new 18-inch intermediate and wet weather rubber.

McLaren’s Daniel Ricciardo and Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz both had a brief stint on the full wets before swapping over to the intermediates, soon to be joined by Hamilton and Perez.

Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, who ran the morning was sixth-quickest completing 44 laps, whilst his team-mate Sainz put himself seventh in the order clocking up a solid 92 tours of the Catalonia circuit in the afternoon.

The Williams Racing pairing followed with Alexander Albon and Nicholas Latifi in eighth and ninth respectively with both drivers racking up 107 laps in total of mileage on the final day and 347 altogether from the three days.

The McLaren Racing duo were next in the order with Daniel Ricciardo completing the top ten with team-mate Lando Norris 11th as both ended the final day with 365 tours of the Circuit De Barcelona-Catalunya together with the Woking-based outfit impressed with the amount of work done to get a better understanding of the MCL36 and having less reliability issues than the rest.

The aforementioned Alonso ended day three prematurely due to the hydraulics issue taking 12th and in-front of Alfa Romeo Racing’s Zhou who was 13th, the Chinese driver handing over the C42 to team-mate Valtteri Bottas for the afternoon with the Finn at rear of the time-sheets, running just ten laps.

AlphaTauri’s Gasly (14th in the order) who’s morning crash at turn five resulted in a damaged front wing and suspension, prevented his team-mate Yuki Tsunoda from piloting the AT03 one final time in the afternoon.

After Uralkali Haas F1 Team’s Nikita Mazepin, 15th in the classifications, encountered a problem in the morning, limited the Russian to completing just nine laps, Haas announced in the afternoon that they would not be returning to the track due to lengthy repairs of the VF-22, ending their session early.

After a great three-days of running which ended with Hamilton top on the final day, with his Friday hot-lap being the fastest time of all the three days – Norris was quickest on day one and Leclerc on day two, we look forward to the Bahrain International Circuit hosting the Official Pre-Season Test from Thursday March 10-Saturday March 12.

Formula 1 2022 Pre-Season Test, Day Three Classification

Catch up on the first two days of testing plus the 2022 team car launch reveals below

#F1 Pre-Season Test, Day 2: @ScuderiaFerrari’s @CharlesLeclerc fastest.

#F1 Pre-Season Test Day 1: @LandoNorris quickest for @McLarenF1.

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