Max Verstappen led both Ferraris as two red flags disrupted Practice 3 at the Monaco Grand Prix.
With a clear lap hard to find on the streets of Monte Carlo, the Dutchman opted to fuel up his red flag and just run on his two sets of soft tyres.
The first stoppage, caused by a crash for Nicholas Latifi at the Swimming Pool chicane, provided the perfect opportunity for Verstappen to change tyres and get the track position with which he posted a 1m11.294s to lead Carlos Sainz by just under half a tenth.
Monte Carlo native Charles Leclerc sat third in the second Prancing Horse, ahead of Valtteri Bottas in the lead Mercedes in fourth.
Sergio Perez didn’t get a clean run on the soft tyre in fifth, as Lando Norris put himself sixth ahead of Lewis Hamilton, who was only seventh.
Alfa Romeo continues to enjoy an improved weekend with Kimi Raikkonen in eighth, Pierre Gasly and Sebastian Vettel completed the top 10.
Mick Schumacher brought the session to an early end with his second crash of the weekend, this time at Casino Square, ruling him out of qualifying.
But like their Ferrari-powered colleagues, Haas also look stronger as the German was 14th and Nikita Mazepin 16th.
McLaren’s Daniel Ricciardo remained a second behind teammate Norris in 13th and Alpine’s struggles also continued with Fernando Alonso 15th and Esteban Ocon last.
George Russell’s run of Q2 appearances appears under threat in 17th, as Yuki Tsunoda was 19th.
On F1’s shortest track, lap times remain very close with 2.3s covering the entire field and now F1 looks forward to one of the most anticipated qualifying sessions of the year later on Saturday.
Full times from FP3 can be seen below:
