Carlos Sainz was fastest in second practice for the Italian Grand Prix, the Ferrari driver set a 21.355 putting himself two hundredths faster than Lando Norris. Sainz had been second to Max Verstappen before late improvements saw the Dutchman pushed to fifth behind teammate Sergio Perez and Oscar Piastri.
It was a strong day for Sainz as he celebrated his twenty-ninth birthday, he was second in FP1 behind Max Verstappen. The session topping time was set on the medium compound of tyres, also partly helped by Verstappen running into traffic during his second qualifying run.
The late improvements in the session demonstrated how powerful the tow is around Monza as it allowed Perez to move up to third, five thousandths ahead of Piastri. However, during the race runs Perez made a mistake through the Parabolica and spun off beaching his Red Bull in the gravel, leading to a red flag.
Perez’s crash, from which he emerged unhurt and did only relatively light damage to his car considering the high speed at which he lost control, blotted what had otherwise been a strong day for him. The Mexican looked about a tenth faster than Verstappen on his race run, before the crash.
In the qualifying simulations, Perez returned the slipstream favour on the home straight for Verstappen’s fastest lap, but the championship leader suggested he didn’t want to give his Red Bull teammate a tow again because it didn’t give him a “proper read” over one lap.
Perez said: “I understeered off on the exit and tried to keep it nailed. I thought I had it under control, but then I touched a little bit the gravel and that was game over. It doesn’t look too bad, the damage. The hit was fairly small. I don’t think we lost anything at the end.”
Norris added, “Really the only run we look competitive was this final run, which makes us look very good. But I would say we are not as good as it looks. With the medium and hard (tyres), we struggled quite a bit more and also on the race runs we struggle quite a bit more than on the one-lap soft.”
The Dutchman, who is looking to break Sebastian Vettel’s record of nine straight wins with victory on Sunday, refused to return the favour giving Perez a tow again because it didn’t give him a “proper read” over one lap. Verstappen is looking as well to be the first back-to-back winner at Monza since 2017 and 2018.
Piastri meanwhile continued to show the pace of the McLaren, he was a tenth and a half off the Sainz and ahead of Verstappen by eight hundredths. While the second McLaren of Oscar Piastri was nine and a half hundredths ahead of Charles Leclerc. The top six covered by less than four-tenths, that is not really surprising because the nature of Monza is often one of the most competitive qualifying sessions of the season.
Also throughout this season, excluding Red Bull, the fight between the top three behind Red Bull, and the rest of the midfield has often come down to hundredths in qualifying.
Alex Albon was seventh going nearly a tenth faster than Fernando Alonso. Albon, who missed last years race with appendicitis, continued to show Williams’s step forwards since July. But Friday is more difficult to read because of another experiment with the Alternative Tyre Allocation experiment, with Mercedes keeping Lewis Hamilton on the harder rubber and eschewing a soft tyre run, leaving him seventeenth.
George Russell did much of the medium tyre work, going ninth the Englishman a tenth behind Alonso and ahead of the two Haas’s. Nico Hulkenberg going over a tenth behind Russell to round out the top ten, and teammate Kevin Magnussen a quarter of a second behind Hulkenberg.
After some limited practice running at the Hungarian Grand Prix, when this format was first used, most teams were able to largely run their normal programme in the second session, so Ferrari and McLaren’s pace compared to Red Bull is genuine going into the rest of the weekend.
Lance Stroll had a difficult afternoon, having missed FP1 as the team gave some running to reserve driver Felipe Drugovich, his seen didn’t last longer than his out lap. The car broke down with a fuel-system problem at Ascari, on his first lap out of the pits. It left the Canadian going into Saturday having done not a single flying lap.
Valtteri Bottas was twelfth putting his Alfa Romeo half a tenth ahead of Pierre Gasly, Gasly’s former teammate Yuki Tsunoda was between him and his current Alpine teammate Esteban Ocon. The Alpha Tauri also half a tenth behind Gasly and two hundredths ahead of Ocon.
Logan Sargeant was sixteenth, the Williams driver three hundredths ahead of Lewis Hamilton. The seven-time champion lucky to escape an investigation from the stewards for appearing to impede Piastri at the second chicane during the early laps.
Liam Lawson was eighteenth going nearly a two-tenths faster than Guanyu Zhou, as Stroll rounded out the field.
