Pierre Gasly at the helm for the final training in Baku

The final exercise of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix was riddled with incidents. We had it all. A red flag, a virtual safety car and lots of yellow flags. The majority of the starters struggled to keep their cars on track and drove to the various run-off zones on the track.

Pierre Gasly was the man in the lead at the end of the session. Not only was he the fastest man on the track, he was also the fastest with just over three tenths of a second. His Scuderia AlphaTauri Honda Teammate Yuki Tsunoda had a better day and finished eighth overall.

Sergio Perez finished the session in second place, he had the pace all weekend and seems to be the favorite for pole in Baku. Max Verstappen didn’t have the best sessions. His car hit the guardrail at Turn 15 and damaged his wing. He failed to start his car again, which resulted in the session being suspended for five minutes with a red flag. Verstappen couldn’t get back in and finished fifteenth.

Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula 1 Team were on their way back this morning. Lewis Hamilton was able to bring his car to third place at the end of his fastest lap thanks to a monster tow. Valtteri Bottas got on the track in some mishaps, blocked off and went into the run-off zones. Overall, he could only take thirteenth place.

Scuderia Ferrari was the most consistent team of the weekend. Their session was also tarnished by the drivers blocking and ruining their flying laps, however Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz Jr. still in fourth and fifth place overall.

Lando Norris surpassed his McLaren F1 team Teammate Daniel Ricciardo, yet again. The duo had a good session and managed to avoid all the yellow flag chaos. Norris brought his car to sixth, Ricciardo completed the top ten in tenth.

Alpine F1 team looking for good shape. They spent most of the weekend in the top ten and look promising to get both cars into Q3 in qualifying. Fernando Alonso was the strongest of the pair and finished seventh, however Esteban Ocon was not far behind him in ninth place.

It doesn’t look like it Aston Martin Cognizant Formula 1 team are their points of exploits from the Monaco Grand Prix. The drivers haven’t really tested the top ten yet and it will be a surprise when both are in Q3. Sebastian Vettel was eleventh with Lance walk just behind him in twelfth place.

Alfa Romeo Racing ORLEN had a pretty quiet session. They couldn’t do anything spectacular with it Kimi Raikkonen comes as the fourteenth and Antonio Giovinazzi in the seventeenth.

George Russell got into trouble when his car stopped at turn 1, put out a virtual safety car. The weekend wasn’t that great for Williams races, especially with Nicholas Latifi with car problems during the races on Friday. Latifi was sixteenth with Russell in eighteenth.

The end of the grid was Uralkali Haas F1 Team. Mick Schumacher and Nikita Mazepin became nineteenth and twentieth.

Free practice 3 results