Kimi Antonelli topped a Madrid Grand Prix FP3 that barely resembled a practice session — three red flags, a broken chassis, a broken axle, and a curfew violation before the cars had even turned a wheel.
The session was in trouble before it started. Aston Martin had breached curfew overnight fighting a battery issue on Lance Stroll’s car, leaving Stroll staring down a grid penalty for new PU components. Racing Bulls weren’t much better off — Arvid Lindblad’s team were still bolting in a new chassis after Friday’s FP2 crash, yet Lindblad wasn’t even suited up when the session went green.
Audi were out first instead of the anticipated McLaren of Lando Norris, with Bortoleto and Hulkenberg first out on mediums. It didn’t take long for things to come apart at the seams: Sainz clipped the Turn 7 barriers with his front wing, Stroll locked up into the runoff for a brief yellow. Small warnings of what was coming.
Red flag one: Lewis Hamilton refuses to stop
Then it went wrong properly. Lewis Hamilton speared into the final-corner barrier with under an hour left, tearing off his front wing and puncturing a tyre. Race control threw the red immediately — Madrid’s director erring hard toward caution where other circuits might have waved yellows and moved on.
Session is temporarily halted as debris from Hamilton’s crash is cleared up.
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Meanwhile, over radio… pic.twitter.com/WL1r1bMmXn
Hamilton didn’t want to hear it. Told to stop the car, he came back over the radio instead: “If I can make it back, I will. If I can’t, I’ll stop safely.” He kept driving — unsafely, by any reading of it — limping the wounded Ferrari toward the pits while the session sat frozen behind him. Race control will have words.
Red flag two: Albon’s axle, Verstappen’s nightmare
Barely had the field found rhythm again before it was gone. Albon put his Williams into the wall — not hard, but hard enough to snap a rear axle. “I’m a little bit surprised – we have damaged a track rod,” team principal James Vowles said. “It wasn’t a big incident but we need to change that. It’s not on Alex, they need to be on the limit and scraping the wall.” He wasn’t finished: “This [delay] is going to make Qualifying more interesting in my opinion, as it will throw the dice a little bit more.”
For Verstappen, the timing could not have been worse — his Red Bull still sat in the garage, untouched, when the second red came out. Race control cut the delay short, stopping the session with 15 minutes still on the clock rather than bleed more time. Nobody in the Racing Bulls garage was complaining — it bought Lindblad’s crew the extra minutes they needed to get his car race-ready.
Red flag three: Bearman ends it
Running resumed at 13:32, Red Bull and Racing Bull straight out of the blocks, Bottas, Gasly and Colapinto right behind them. For a few minutes it looked like the session might actually finish clean. It didn’t. Norris slid wide in the final sector with three minutes left, collecting Gasly on the way through — and then Bearman lost the rear entirely between Turns 10 and 11, spinning hard into the barriers with enough force to launch a tyre onto the roof of his own car. He climbed out unhurt. The Haas didn’t get off so lightly, and neither did the session — red-flagged for the third and final time, and never restarted.
When the dust cleared, it was Antonelli’s 1:32.797s on top, Leclerc a tenth back in second. Getting there had taken most of the afternoon.
READ MORE – F1 2026 Spanish Grand Prix – FP3 Results
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