Leclerc leads Verstappen in FP3 as Hamilton crashes

Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc has made it a clean sweep of practice sessions at Formula 1’s Monaco Grand Prix as a tyre enigma sets up an intriguing qualifying session, while team-mate Lewis Hamilton tagged the wall.

Having topped Friday’s two practice sessions, Leclerc bested Red Bull’s Max Verstappen to head into qualifying as the slight favourite to make it back-to-back poles at his home race.

Leclerc improved on Verstappen’s time at the end of the session, with his 1m11.179s just 0.054s quicker than the world champion’s effort on mediums, before improving his time to a 1m10.953s to go nearly three tenths clear.

That highlighted the headache Pirelli’s tyre selection is causing teams into qualifying, as Verstappen struggled to go quicker on the soft C6 compound than on his C5 medium tyre.

Verstappen complained the C6 had “no grip at all” into Turn 1, while drivers resorted to trying two consecutive cooldown laps to get the red-walled tyre back into the right operating window.

The start of the final one-hour session at the sunny riviera was a largely leisurely affair as only six drivers took to the track over the first quarter.

The session picked up in the second quarter with Leclerc and Norris trading turns at the top of the leaderboard as times were whittled down on a street circuit that was opened to the public overnight and looked more slippery than it was on Friday afternoon.

Verstappen went top on the medium tyres after 24 minutes, briefly deposed by Leclerc before he found more pace around the halfway mark with a 1m11.233s.

After a brief mid-session lull, teams tried different tactics the exploit the soft tyres, but nobody appeared capable of besting Verstappen’s medium time.

Mercedes George Russell said he was out of ideas as he was urged to try double cooldown laps, with traffic issues further hampering several flyers.

Verstappen couldn’t find improvement on the softs either as he voiced his dislike of the C6 compound, but in the dying minutes Leclerc did find pace to make it a clean sweep of all three practice sessions.

Norris and Oscar Piastri were third and fourth fastest for McLaren, respectively three and four tenths behind the Ferrari.

Hamilton was fifth but as he chased a late improvement the seven-time world champion lost control over his Ferrari on the long left-hander of Massenet, sliding into the barriers with his right-rear and then right-front, causing a red flag that effectively ended the session.

Alex Albon was sixth for Williams followed by Racing Bulls man Liam Lawson, who confirmed a solid start to the weekend on Friday.

The second Williams of Carlos Sainz was eighth ahead of Red Bull’s Yuki Tsunoda, all within a second of Leclerc. Mercedes rookie Andrea Kimi Antonelli headed team-mate Russell to round out the top 10.

F1 Monaco GP – FP3 results