Leclerc sweeps Monaco practice after late Hamilton crash in FP3

Charles Leclerc has swept all three practice sessions after topping an intriguing FP3 at the Monaco Grand Prix truncated by a Lewis Hamilton crash with two minutes remaining.

Hamilton’s session came to a slightly premature end with a tank slapper at Massenet, at the top of the hill. The slow-moving Andrea Kimi Antonelli and Esteban Ocon appeared ahead of him as he rounded the long left-hander when his Ferrari washed out and smacked the outside barrier.

Momentum carried him all the way into Casino Square, his front-right tire popping off its rim on the way, where he came to a crunching halt to trigger a red flag.

It was timely for Leclerc, who only two minutes earlier set the fastest time of the session to cement himself into top spot. The Monegasque’s best lap, set on eight-lap-old softs, came in at 1m10.953s, putting him a commanding 0.28s clear at the top of the field, his largest margin of the weekend.

It was a punctuation mark on an unusual session of drivers troubleshooting how to get the best out of the C6 tire, the softest compound in Pirelli’s range and brand-new for this season. The difficulty activating the rubber was such that almost every driver failed to improve when they bolted on new soft tires for their final runs of the session, when the field engages in qualifying simulation.

Drivers were dependably finding that the tire was good for the first sector and maybe the second but faded rapidly thereafter, leaving them worse off overall.

Oscar Piastri was the first driver to think his way through it, lapping more slowly in the first sector to go purple in the middle split and hold on for an improved time to the finishing line.

Leclerc followed suit to take top spot, as did Lando Norris, who then moved to third ahead of Piastri.

Leclerc, however, then flipped the script by slamming on a purple first sector and a green middle split to move comfortably to the top, underlining his superiority ahead of qualifying.

Max Verstappen ended the session as his closest challenger, but the Dutchman’s fastest time was set at the end of a 10-lap run on medium tires early in the hour.

His Red Bull Racing car looked assured on the firmer tire, but he complained of a lack of grip on the soft, his attempt at a faster lap scuppered by big slides through Portier and Anthony Noghes, the final corner.

Norris and Piastri were third and fourth, 0.294s and 0.445s off the pace respectively, with the crashed-out Hamilton fifth and 0.563s slower than his teammate.

Alex Albon was sixth for Williams ahead of Liam Lawson, who continues his Racing Bulls team’s strong run through practice by lapping 0.861s off top spot.

Carlos Sainz recovered from a slow start to the session to end eighth ahead of Yuki Tsunoda, who was 0.999s down on Leclerc and complained of a lack of grip, similar to Verstappen, after switching to softs.

“I’ve got so much instability I don’t know why,” he radioed before improving very marginally on a subsequent soft run.

Antonelli and Mercedes teammate George Russell were more than a second off the pace in 10th and 11th ahead of Fernando Alonso, Nico Hulkenberg, Pierre Gasly and Lance Stroll.

Oliver Bearman, who will serve a 10-place grid penalty later today for ignoring red flags in FP2, was 16th ahead of Isack Hadjar, Esteban Ocon and Gabriel Bortoleto.

Franco Colapinto was again slowest in the session, 0.25s off the back of the pack and 0.657s slower than teammate Gasly.

The Argentine rookie ended the hour under investigation for an alleged red flag infringement.