Alonso beats Gasly and Vettel to top the timesheets as rain hits Montreal

Fernando Alonso continued his strong weekend in Montreal as he set the pace during a rain-affected Free Practice 3 at the Canadian Grand Prix.

Alonso topped the timesheets with a lap of 1:33.386, while Pierre Gasly was just over five hundreths of a second back in P2.

Sebastian Vettel claimed third, ahead of Esteban Ocon in fourth.

Daniel Ricciardo took P5, and Lando Norris rounded out the top six in what proved to be a weather-affected session.

Difficult conditions hit FP3

With rain falling, there was a quiet beginning to the hour, as many drivers chose to stay in the garage. A few ventured out to test the conditions on wet weather tyres, with Mick Schumacher reporting difficult conditions during his outing on track.

There were a few wobbles on the circuit when the action picked up as the cars worked their way around the damp track. Kevin Magnussen ended up on the grass, while Yuki Tsunoda went wide at Turn 8.

As the session approached the halfway point, nearly half of the field seemed content to stay in the pits. Given that the final practice session takes place only two hours before qualifying, nobody would want to take any unnecessary risks.

Carlos Sainz – known to run well in the wet – was at the top of the leaderboard 30 minutes in, ahead of Alonso, who put in an impressive performance during Friday's practice sessions.

It wasn't until there was 25 minutes left on the clock that Max Verstappen made an appearance on circuit to explore the conditions, before returning to the pits.

Mixed-up timesheets and late incidents

The conditions seemed to result in some mixed-up orders on the timesheets at certain stages of the session.

With the likes of Verstappen, Sergio Perez and Charles Leclerc avoiding setting a lap until later on, there were some different names at the top of the pack.

Vettel set the pace with around 20 minutes left in the hour, while Alonso was in third ahead of Tsunoda in fourth. Lance Stroll – another driver comfortable with wet conditions – put himself in fifth.

As the wind picked up, Alonso became the first to switch to Intermediate tyres in the latter stages of the hour, along with Vettel. Sainz soon followed suit, and the three on this compound found themselves running from P1 to P3 for a time.

Many other drivers then started to put the Intermediates on, including Verstappen, who had a slight moment at Turn 9 as he returned to the track.

The switch to this tyre resulted in the times changing rapidly, while George Russell remained on the Wet compound.

There was a brief yellow flag with just a few minutes remaining in the session as Magnussen went off the track at Turn 2, though the Haas driver managed to reverse back onto the circuit.

Verstappen also had a similar incident soon afterwards but, like Magnussen, manoeuvred a return to the track.