The Monegasque driver set a best time of 1:29.735 to edge out defending world champion Verstappen by 0.033s.
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In the final practise session for the 2022 FIA Formula 1 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc beat out Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez. The Monegasque driver set a best time of 1:29.735 to edge out defending world champion Verstappen by 0.033s. The final one-hour practise session began quietly, but the Ferraris of Leclerc and Sainz soon enlivened the proceedings as they battled for soft tyre supremacy. Leclerc took the lead with a lap time of 1:31.052, but Sainz surged ahead by four hundredths of a second. Leclerc then added more time to his lap, clocking in at 1:30.139.
Red Bull kept its powder dry almost until the halfway mark, when Perez moved to second, splitting the Ferraris and lying 0.152s behind the leaders. Verstappen, on the other hand, put in a conservative first flier to finish fourth. After settling into a rhythm, the world champion lit up the timing screens with a lap of 1:29.768s, four tenths faster than Leclerc. After that, Pierre Gasly moved up to third in his AlphaTauri. However, the French driver’s session was cut short shortly after the half-hour mark when he stopped at the pity exit with a suspected driveshaft issue.
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Verstappen might have improved later in the session, but a small error caused him to run over the insider kern in Turn 17 and the lap was lost. It left the field wide open for Leclerc, who finished with the fastest time of the session in the final minutes. Meanwhile, Sainz finished fourth, 0.274 seconds behind Leclerc and 0.176 seconds behind Perez, who finished the session just 0.065 seconds behind teammate Verstappen.
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Bottas finished fifth in the session, ahead of Esteban Ocon of Alpine and Gasly of Gasly. Kevin Magnussen continued Haas’ strong early-season form by finishing eighth, ahead of Fernando Alonso of Alpine and Yuki Tsunoda of AlphaTauri.
The Mercedes duo of Lewis Hamilton and George Russell finished P11 and P14 respectively.
