Ocon was the second driver to reach the century mark but stopped with a power unit leak soon after his Alpine crossed the line for the hundredth time. That triggering a red flag and after his car was recovered, running didn’t resume for long.
At lunchtime, McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl admitted that it was in a race against time to solve its brake issues, with new parts having to be flown out ahead of the final day.
Lando Norris had another interrupted session without any long runs, and soon after the session restarted, he stopped at the end of the pitlane, causing another pause.
That brought us into the final hour with drivers and teams seemingly keen to up the competitive ante.
With soft C4 tyres, Lewis Hamilton started to set faster times, and he was followed by Max Verstappen with the same rubber.
When the Red Bull encountered Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari, he couldn’t help himself, looking down the inside of Turn 8 for an overtake and then scrapping for no position whatsoever for almost a lap.
Verstappen ended up ahead – with an unknown fuel load and engine mode — but finished with what was then the second-fastest time, 0.4sec behind Sainz.
More racing during testing 🤩
It's Carlos Sainz and Max Verstappen giving us flavour of what we can expect next weekend 🥳 pic.twitter.com/C0kxKwj0r8
— Sky Sports F1 (@SkySportsF1) March 11, 2022
Sister team AlphaTauri completed the most laps; Tsunoda recording all 120 tours and he was followed by the Aston duo of Lance Stroll and Sebastian Vettel, despite the German’s car having to be recovered this morning.
McLaren’s 60 lap total illustrated its woes, with only Williams racking up fewer laps.
Haas had only only managed 64 laps by then but as the teams shut down for the day, Magnussen headed back out for an extra session to make up for the hours lost on Thursday to freight delays. A 1min 33.207sec lap in the cooler night air was good enough to leap to the top of the leaderboard.
Afternoon session times
Driver | Team | Best lap | Laps completed | |
1 | Kevin Magnussen | Haas | 1min 33.207sec | 60 |
2 | Carlos Sainz | Ferrari | 1min 33.532sec | 60 |
3 | Max Verstappen | Red Bull | 1min 34.011sec | 86 |
4 | Lance Stroll | Aston Martin | 1min 34.064sec | 70 |
5 | Lewis Hamilton | Mercedes | 1min 34.141sec | 47 |
6 | Esteban Ocon | Alpine | 1min 34.276sec | 111 |
7 | Charles Leclerc | Ferrari | 1min 34.366sec | 54 |
8 | Lando Norris | McLaren | 1min 34.609sec | 60 |
9 | Sebastian Vettel | Aston Martin | 1min 36.020sec | 46 |
10 | Yuki Tsunoda | AlphaTauri | 1min 36.802sec | 120 |
11 | Valtteri Bottas | Alfa Romeo | 1min 36.987sec | 25 |
12 | Mick Schumacher | Haas | 1min 37.846sec | 23 |
13 | George Russell | Mercedes | 1min 38.585sec | 67 |
14 | Nicholas Latifi | Williams | 1min 39.845sec | 12 |
15 | Guanyu Zhou | Alfa Romeo | 1min 39.984sec | 48 |