Mercedes completes Vegas practice sweep despite late red flag

George Russell completed a Mercedes practice clean sweep at the Las Vegas Grand Prix after a late red flag truncated the final qualifying preparations in FP3.

The frontrunners — bar Russell — had each completed one flying lap on fresh soft tire as the circuit began to grip up when Lance Stroll’s Aston Martin switched itself off exiting Turn 12, at the north end of Las Vegas Boulevard.

The Canadian parked by a gap in the fence, but the car’s warning lights suggested the hybrid system hadn’t been safely disabled and the car was therefore unsafe for the marshals to touch, necessitating a red flag to recover the stricken car from the track.

With less than seven minutes remaining on the clock, the stoppage effectively ended the session, with running resumes in the final 60 seconds only to allow for practice starts.

It ensured Russell, who was the only one of the leaders to have completed two flying laps, was locked into top spot with a best time of 1m 33.570s.

The benchmark was around 0.3s quicker than FP2 on Thursday and approximately half a second quicker than FP3 last season.

Oscar Piastri, the penultimate frontrunner to cross the line before the red flag, was second and 0.215s adrift, with Carlos Sainz making it three teams inside the top three by taking his Ferrari around the track 0.348s off the pace.

Lando Norris, the last of the top drivers to set a time, was fourth and 0.438s slower than Russell.

Max Verstappen completed a herculean turnaround for Red Bull Racing after having lamented a lack of one-lap pace at the end of Thursday practice, his RB20 struggling in the low-grip conditions.

Changes made overnight appeared to make no meaningful difference, with Verstappen complaining over team radius of heavy graining on his front-left tire and on the rear axle.

“The car is undriveable,” he reported during his opening long-run simulation, and after being told to continue he added: “I can’t drive it. “I’m going to crash.”

He was brought in for more set-up changes ahead of his qualifying simulation, and they finally appeared to do the trick.

His sole soft-tire run put him briefly at the top of the order, to which he responded, “Grip felt miles better, much better.”

Unable to set a second time, he ended up 0.567s off the pace.

Lewis Hamilton, who finished both Thursday practice sessions, aborted his only representative soft-tire run and ended up sixth, 0.771s off the pace.

Alex Albon, his car cured of its Thursday fuel system issues, was seventh ahead of Williams teammate Franco Colapinto.

Kevin Magnussen and Pierre Gasly completed the top 10 ahead of Nico Hulkenberg in 11, the trio 1.3s off the pace and split by just 0.025s.

Charles Leclerc was two-thirds of the way through his first qualifying run and had just set a purple middle sector when the red flag was called, leaving him 12th.

Sergio Perez followed in 13th, although the Mexican had two attempts at a flying lap before the red flag.

Esteban Ocon was 14th ahead of Fernando Alonso, Yuki Tsunoda, Valtteri Bottas, Liam Lawson, Lance Stroll and Zhou Guanyu.