Red Bull ace Max Verstappen is favourite to take pole for the 2021 Bahrain Grand Prix this afternoon after topping all three free practice sessions in his RB16B.
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The Dutch driver topped Free Practice Three (FP3) by a margin of almost seven-tenths of a second, with Sir Lewis Hamilton managing a lap time good enough for second.
It should be noted that qualifying will take place in cooler track conditions, but Verstappen also set the pace in FP2 on Friday, which took place in the evening in fairly similar conditions to what we will have during qualifying later today.
Pierre Gasly was P3 in his AlphaTauri as the session ended, ahead of Valtteri Bottas, Sergio Perez and Carlos Sainz, in that order.
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Kimi Raikkonen, Esteban Ocon, Lance Stroll and Daniel Ricciardo round out the top ten.
Charles Leclerc ended the session in P11, with his best effort four-tenths of a second slower than Sainz’s quickest lap.
Sebastian Vettel was around three-tenths of a second off of team-mate Stroll’s pace, with the German seemingly struggling to get to grips with the Aston Martin AMR21 after completing the fewest laps of any driver in pre-season testing earlier this month.
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Qualifying for the 2021 Bahrain Grand Prix will take place at 6pm local time (3pm GMT) and will provide us with a much more accurate indication of the pecking order, as there are many different variables at play in testing and practice, including different tyre compounds, engine modes, and track evolution.
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