Max Verstappen strikes back as home hero Oscar Piastri shines in final Australian practice

Max Verstappen turned Friday's form book on its head to thrust himself into contention for pole position at the Australian Grand Prix.

Four-time F1 champion Verstappen was a worried man after Friday's two practice sessions at Melbourne's Albert Park, suggesting the car felt good but it lacked pace.

Red Bull, as is often the way, found time in the car overnight to hand Verstappen a more powerful RB21 to at least give their driver a fighting chance of pole.

Verstappen had to settle for third quickest at the end of the final hour of assessment, with home hero Oscar Piastri leading the way in his McLaren with 1:15.921s and a more competitive George Russell in his Mercedes second on the timesheet, 0.039s adrift, and Verstappen 0.081s down.

Brutal for Bearman

As for Friday's pacesetter Charles Leclerc, the Monégasque was a quarter of a second off the pace in fourth, two-tenths of a second ahead of new team-mate Lewis Hamilton, albeit with the seven-time F1 champion eighth.

Hamilton has at least lowered the gap between himself and Leclerc over the three sessions - 0.6s after FP1; 0.4s after FP2, and now 0.2s after the final session.

In between Leclerc and Hamilton were rookie, and the driver who has replaced him at Mercedes, Kimi Antonelli, along with Williams duo Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon.

Racing Bulls Yuki Tsunoda was ninth quickest, whilst McLaren's Lando Norris was a surprisingly lowly 10th, 0.676s behind team-mate Piastri, albeit after losing time in the final sector behind another car.

The session was less than three minutes old when Oliver Bearman suffered another disastrous moment.

After crashing his Haas 37 minutes into FP1, damaging the car to such an extent that he missed all of FP2, he could not have started final practice more miserably.

The 19-year-old was the first out of the garage at the start of final practice, but on his first push lap, approaching the Turn 11 right-hander, it appeared that he had put the left rear wheel onto the grass.

Coming out of the corner, Bearman spun again, careering backwards into a gravel trap where he beached the car. He failed to return and goes into qualifying with just 13-and-a-half laps under his belt.

After a nine-minute delay to remove Bearman's car, there was an obvious rush by all the teams to get running underway to make up for lost time.

Twenty-five minutes into the session, it was looking good for the Australians as Piastri and Doohan were first and third, sandwiching Verstappen. Piastri led the way with 1:17.298s.

That pecking order, however, was quickly disrupted as Verstappen purpled all three sectors to post a time of 1:16.646s.

Leclerc and Hamilton, just a thousandth of a second apart, moved to within three-hundredths of a second within Verstappen.

It was then that Mercedes joined the fray. Russell had complained about a lack of pace on the soft tyres after Friday running but showed the team had found speed on that rubber overnight as he set the fastest lap of the weekend with a 1:16.402s.

But for clipping the gravel at the awkward Turn 6 sweep, Norris could arguably have usurped Russell but instead had to settle for second quickest, two-tenths of a second down before Albon added his name into the mix, too, with a lap a tenth-of-a-second off, followed swiftly by Sainz, a further 0.023s back.

With 15 minutes remaining, Verstappen again purpled all three sectors to raise the bar to 1:16.002s. Following behind, Piastri moved to within 0.075s.

On another push lap, Piastri had the pro-Australian crowd cheering as he moved into top spot with the first lap below 76 seconds of the weekend with 1:15.921s, and that proved to be the best of the session.

As with Bearman, the session was also a disaster for Verstappen's team-mate Liam Lawson who managed only two laps before encountering an air issue within the power unit.