Perez outpaces Leclerc in FP3 as Mercedes struggles

The session started with track temperatures nearly hitting 50°C, a point which was reached and surpassed by FP3’s halfway point, and Verstappen led the field out of the pits – an atypical run plan for Red Bull in final practice, as the team usually leaves the garage late in FP3 to focus solely on qualifying preparation runs.

But after missing essentially all of FP2 with gearbox and hydraulic problems, Red Bull needed to give its world champion time to get up to speed on the Miami circuit, which meant he headed out as soon the session began to pound around on the medium tyres.

His initial benchmark at the head of the pack was a 1m34.037s, which was beaten at the end of the opening five minutes of the final one-hour practice session by Leclerc’s 1m32.250s on the soft tyres.

But Verstappen’s as opening run continued, he duly retook the top spot with a 1m31.55s set with 10 minutes completed.

At this stage the session was interrupted when Ocon crashed heavily into the barriers inside the tight chicane, beneath the public road underpass at the end of the second sector.

In very similar circumstances to Carlos Sainz’s FP2 crash on Friday, the Alpine driver lost control of the rear of his car as he exited the rapid left of Turn 13 and slammed hard into the barriers on the outside after spinning backwards and then sideways towards the wall.

The impact broke the left-front from Ocon’s car and the session was suspended for 13 minutes while the wreckage was cleared.

When the action resumed, the majority of the field headed out immediately again as they looked to make up for even more lost time following the red flags that blighted both Friday practice sessions.

Both Verstappen and Leclerc returned to the fray on the same compounds they had started FP3, with the latter cutting his rivals advantage to 0.231s shortly after the restart while the Verstappen lapped a few seconds off his best pace so far.

While Ferrari’s championship leader soon came in to prepare for a third…