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Formula 1 Spanish GP

F1 Spanish GP Live Commentary and Updates - FP3 & Qualifying

Saturday's action from the seventh round of the 2023 Formula 1 season.

Kevin Magnussen, Haas VF-23, makes a pit stop during FP2

F1 heads to its seventh round this weekend and the second in a double-header after last weekend's Monaco Grand Prix.

Max Verstappen overcame a sudden downpour in the principality to claim his fourth Formula 1 victory of 2023, beating Fernando Alonso by 27.9 seconds.

He now leads the standings by 39 points from Red Bull team-mate Sergio Perez, with Alonso in third heading into his home race.

FP3 begins at 11:30am BST and qualifying starts at 3pm BST.

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Rain
"Thunder heard over the last corners," Alex Kalinauckas tells us. This FP3 session may not be an entirely straightforward one.
There's naturally been plenty of talk about how the circuit has changed for this year, with the unpopular final chicane removed to bring back the flat out blast through the final corner for the first time since 2006. But drivers think this may not facilitate overtaking in the manner intended: https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/f1-drivers-fear-unintended-consequences-of-barcelona-track-changes/10477615/
 
Rain in Spain isn't unheard of, naturally. But there haven't been all that many F1 races blighted by the weather over the years. The most famous, naturally, is the 1996 encounter that marked Michael Schumacher's first win for Ferrari after a virtuoso drive that made Autosport chief editor Kevin Turner's list of the 10 greatest wet drives in F1 history. Plus subscribers can read that here: https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/ranking-f1s-greatest-wet-weather-drives-5113738/5113738/
In case you missed any of yesterday's action, Max Verstappen topped both sessions in dominant fashion for Red Bull. You can read Alex Kalinauckas's trackside assessment of what we learned on Friday here: https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/what-we-learned-from-friday-practice-at-f1s-2023-spanish-gp/10477431/
Essentially it's a question of when it will rain, not if. Dark black clouds are looming, and we're set to have very different conditions from the conclusion of the F3 race a little earlier on - which was won by Zak O'Sullivan from fellow Briton Luke Browning.
Hello and welcome to Autosport's live text coverage of Saturday's track action from Barcelona. FP3 gets going in a little under 20 minutes and the skies are threatening, to say the least.

By: Autosport Staff

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