Photos directly from the Principality with my colleague Alessandro Martellotta
Also in FP3 the streets of the Principality of Monaco they claim victims: a red flag was not lacking in this session either, and it was the driver who paid the price for a mistake this time 7 times world champion than at the exit of the curve Mirabeau Alta lost control of his single-seater going into the barriers and breaking the wheel-body connection. Breaking point identical to most of the accidents that occur in Monaco, just think of Leclerc in 2021 or Sainz yesterday afternoon. In recovering the British car, a funny situation arose with the car #44 which, recovered from a crane truck of the commissioners, she literally flew over the streets of the principality like it was an airplane. The accident occurred about 10′ after the end of the session, which is why the FP3 closed early than expected.
Net of the Lewis error worry about the situation Ferrari and for the competition in general: the last tests ended with a clear gap from Red Bull which managed to finish well half a second to the Ferraris. The only one exception are (perhaps) the Aston Martin: Stroll finished in third place 166 thousandths behind Max, and Alonso didn’t do a qualifying-style flying lap towards the end of the session, which is why we don’t know his true potential, but given what his team-mate did we can expect even more from Fernando, it remains to be seen whether it will be enough for pole, it doesn’t seem at the moment.
Worryingas we said, the situation at home Ferrarialso referring to the Monegasque audios: Charles pointed out to his team that he is unable to carry out the ‘S’ curve that precedes the swimming pools as he would likein that stretch the number #16 struggles to keep the car on the ideal trajectory and this, which contributes to the 7 tenths taken by Maxcould be a huge problem. If Ferrari should in fact have wrong set up of the car for this weekend she could only think of patching up the disaster that awaits her in qualifying. But let’s not rush to an alarming conclusion, it is anyway difficult to make accurate predictions on what we will see this afternoon because it is unusual for the gap between two top teams to change so suddenly overnight. Yesterday the Ferraris didn’t seem to be that far from pole, while today the Red Bulls seem to have shown that they are competing in a separate category, however, it must be noted that yesterday Leclerc’s best time in FP2 was 1:12:527, today it did not drop below 1:13:475, almost 1 second apart, although the difference is partly due to the rubber on the track.
Below the complete standings of the FP3 of the 2023 Monte Carlo Grand Prix: