Max Verstappen narrowly beat Carlos Sainz during final practice for Formula 1’s Monaco Grand Prix as title leader Lewis Hamilton classified only seventh.
Sainz maintained Ferrari’s strong Thursday form for much of the session before his benchmark was usurped by Verstappen in cooler and cloudier conditions compared to second practice.
Verstappen’s time of 1:11.294 was not beaten thereafter as he wound up a mere 0.047s clear of Ferrari driver Sainz.
Further potential improvements were not possible during the final two minutes of the session after Mick Schumacher crashed heavily through Casino Square.
Hamilton had not been a factor at the front of the leaderboard during the session and thus classified only seventh, seven-tenths off the pace, leaving him and Mercedes with pace to find prior to qualifying.
Charles Leclerc, who led Thursday’s running on home soil, wound up third, ahead of Valtteri Bottas, Red Bull’s Sergio Perez and McLaren’s Lando Norris.
Norris narrowly avoided a collision with Sainz in the final sector after catching his former team-mate while on a hot lap.
Lunchtime work for Williams and Haas
Nicholas Latifi was the first driver to suffer a hefty shunt this weekend after making a mistake at the second part of Piscine.
Latifi clipped the inside barrier, with the trajectory sending him over the yellow kerb on the second apex, leaving him helpless to avoid a secondary – and more costly – impact with the outside barrier.
The front-right of Latifi’s Williams FW43B sustained sizeable damage and caused the session to be halted.
The session was restarted but then called two minutes from time after fellow Monaco F1 debutant Schumacher had a sizeable accident through Casino Square.
The left-hand-side of Schumacher’s Haas VF-21 sustained a large amount of damage with the team facing a race against time to repair the car in time for qualifying.
It means that of the four Monaco F1 rookies – with Latifi having not raced at the Principality since stepping up in 2020 – three have suffered session-ending accidents.
Nikita Mazepin, who has so far kept it clean, was 16th overall, two spots behind Schumacher.
Ricciardo, Alpine off the pace
Daniel Ricciardo’s troubled weekend continued as the 2018 Monaco victor classified only 13th overall, almost a second behind team-mate Norris.
Alpine also had a difficult session with Fernando Alonso 15th and Esteban Ocon – hampered by the red flags – at the foot of the 20-driver classification.
Their struggles opened some opportunities higher up the field, with Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel – yet to score in 2021 – inside the top 10, either side of AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly.
Qualifying for Formula 1’s Monaco Grand Prix will begin at 15:00 local time
[motorsport_result id='63904']
Discussion about this post