Max Verstappen was fastest in the first practice for the Italian Grand Prix, the Red Bull driver set a 22.657 on the soft tyre going nearly half a second faster than Carlos Sainz. The Dutchman goes into this weekend looking to complete his domination of the European season with a ninth consecutive win, and be the first driver to achieve that.
Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez was third a tenth and three quarters behind and ahead of the second Ferrari of Charles Leclerc by a tenth and a half. Verstappen is chasing a record tenth race win in succession on Sunday. While on paper Monza is another circuit which favours Red Bull it has in recent history thrown up odd results, Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton are the last team to win consecutively in 2017 and 2018.
George Russell was fifth, the Mercedes driver a quarter of a second ahead of Fernando Alonso in sixth. However, the Englishman did all his running on the hardest compound of tyre which suggests there is more time for Mercedes to find. Alonso was the only driver in the top six to use the medium tyre as everyone else was on the hard compound.
Lando Norris was seventh a tenth and a half behind Alonso, and ahead of Lewis Hamilton by three hundredths. Both Mercedes drivers go into the weekend having signed new two-year contracts, as they both look to return the German manufacturer back to championship-winning ways. The first session was largely trouble-free, though the only drama was Alex Albon going off at Ascari.
FP1 saw a variety of approaches from each team, this weekend is being used to trail the alternative tyre allocation, basically, the teams have one less set of softs and mediums. This weekend replacing neighbouring Emilia-Romagna which was cancelled due to flooding in May. The top five on the timesheet all ran the hardest compound throughout the hour, with the best lap times therefore set a little earlier in the session than normal.
Yuki Tsunoda put his Alpha Tauri ninth, the Japanese driver going a tenth and three-quarters faster than the Williams off Albon. Williams looking to continue to show progress at the end of the European season, Logan Sargeant only two-tenths off.
However, they were split by the second McLaren of Oscar Piastri who was only two-thousandths of a second behind Albon. Following that time by the Australian, Piastri switched his focus switched to the long runs following his brief stint on top of the times.
Liam Lawson goes into his first full weekend standing in for fellow Australian Daniel Ricciardo, following his injury in FP2 last weekend in Zandvoort. The Alpha Tauri driver managed twenty-four laps going just under a tenth faster than Pierre Gasly, the Frenchman nearly managing a half-race distance on a single set of soft tyres.
Both Alfa Romeo’s of Valtteri Bottas and Guanyu Zhou were afflicted by clutch software issues, which kept throwing up anti-stall modes as they tried to leave the pits. Once that issue was resolved both complained about the rear-end balance of the car and cited that the C43 was “undriveable” in unison, Bottas complaining of aerodynamic stalling and Zhou of the car bottoming out. Following adjustments to the car, both drivers reported that the car felt stronger.
Meanwhile, although the team itself is based in Switzerland, the Monza weekend is also a home race of sorts for the Alfa Romeo-sponsored outfit.
Nico Hulkenberg was sixteenth going two hundredths faster than Esteban Ocon. Felipe Drugovich, standing in for Lance Stroll, was eighteenth, eight hundredths faster than Kevin Magnussen. Zhou’s issues saw him round out the field.
