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Formula 1
Saudi Arabian GP
F1 Saudi Arabian GP Live Commentary and Updates - FP3 and Qualifying
Saturday's Formula 1 action from the Jeddah Corniche Circuit
Max Verstappen took a clean sweep of top spot in Friday’s two practice sessions, with Red Bull looking dominant once again after its 1-2 in the Bahrain Grand Prix opener.
All eyes will be on what its rivals can do in response at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit, and whether Aston Martin can maintain its surprise start having seen Fernando Alonso finish on the podium in the opener.
Charles Leclerc goes into the Saudi race with a 10-place grid penalty due to taking his third set of control electronics for his Ferrari after his Bahrain retirement.
Saudi Arabian GP final practice begins at 1:30pm GMT followed by qualifying at 5:00pm GMT to decide the starting grid for the race on Sunday at 5:00pm GMT.
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So, in the drop zone with three and a bit minutes to go, Sainz,. Zhou, Bottas and Hulkenberg are in trouble. We know Verstappen is out.
It's not all rosey for Sainz, either as he's just lost a time for track limits and is also outside the drop zone.
Verstappen is trudging down to the FIA garage and the Red Bull driver is eliminated in Q2. This circuit loves to spring a surprise!
Perez, meanwhile, is unable to beat Alonso's earlier time and is a tenth slower.
And Verstappen is out of the car - there's just five minutes to go, is this it?!
He is indeed now back in the garage and there's plenty of concern on the face of Christian Horner! The battle for pole could be anyone's guess!
"It's almost not accelerating," says Verstappen. He's told he can try to limp back around if he can.
All sounded fine for Verstappen until suddenly the engine noise drops and he slows to a crawl.
The Red Bull is just crawling around and has clearly got serious problems! This could blow qualifying wide open!
Yellow flag
And there's a problem for Verstappen! He says it's an "engine problem."
Here comes Verstappen and it's just a warm-up lap for the Red Bull after he has a snap when running through Turn 1 and 2.
Stroll and Ocon are third and fourth, while Sainz is already bumped down to eighth.
Stopwatch
And Alonso sets the early pace a 1m28.757s, half a second clear of Stroll, and well ahead of the Ferraris.
Alonso is lighting up the timing screens with plenty of purple at the moment!
Now we're getting the typical qualifying nonsense of cars slowly trundling around trying to get some space.
Just as we type that, Verstappen also joins the action!
The Ferraris and Mercs are also on track so it's just the two Red Bulls and Gasly still in the pits.
There's another queue of drivers wanting to head out and it's the Alfas and Haas cars that lead the way from the Astons and Piastri's McLaren.
Green flag
Right after that entertaining Q1, now Q2 begins.
Plenty of errors in that session then! Underlines my earlier comment about nothing being guranteed on the Saudi streets!
Oh and Sargeant locks up approaching Turn 1 and hit the wall! That's why he's out, while de Vries' earlier "mess up" involved the AlphaTauri also clipping the barriers.
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"Messed up the last corner," says a frustrated de Vries, who earlier missed FP3.
So, let's pause for breath after a frantic 18 minutes! And what a close battle it was to make Q2! Bottas nudged Tsunoda out by just 0.01s
The timing screen shows that Sargeant stopped out on track on his last lap so never had chance to improve after his spin and track-limits infringement.
McLaren had shown some improved practice performance but a double Q1 elimination is not what they wanted here.
And that's it, so Tsunoda, Albon, de Vries, Norris and Sargeant are the drivers knocked out.
Tsunoda bumps Albon into trouble as well, while Piastri climbs up to 11th right at the death.
Bottas jumps up to 14th so now Piastri is in danger of joining team-mate Norris in being eliminated.
Checkered flag
Alonso improves to third and has narrowed the gap to Verstappen to half a second as the chequered flag comes out.
Ocon now moves up to seventh after being forced into another run, while Gasly climbs to 11th. That puts Bottas now into the drop zone.
Sainz and Hulkenberg have also fallen foul of the track-limits rules, but it's not likely to cost them too much here.
For a team that was confident of challenging the frontrunners, Alpine is under pressure here with Gasly in the dropzone and Ocon on the bubble.
Frantic work is taking place at McLaren but it's likely to be in vain as Norris almost certainly isn't going to get back out in time here.
Woah, the Williams driver was carrying too much speed and already arrived into the corner sideways.
Yellow flag
Sargeant now compounds his misery by spinning at Turn 22! He's really going to struggle to get through to Q2 now.
With a few minutes of the session remaining, those in trouble are Norris (who has damaged steering and may not get back out), Tsunoda, de Vries, Gasly and Sargeant (who's yet to post a time after his earlier effort is deleted for track limits).
Alonso puts that spin behind him as he leaps up to fourth place, just a few hundreths slower than Leclerc in third.
It's a bit less dramatic than de Vries' earlier effort and he's just a bit too keen to get on the throttle and make use of the Aston's pace and he does a 180-degree spin.
Yellow flag
More incident! Alonso now has a spin at Turn 2 but he also avoids the barriers.
There's another improvements from the Ferraris as Leclerc is now up to third, just a tenth behind Perez, but still a huge chunk of time behind Verstappen.
By: Autosport Staff
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