Lewis Hamilton was fastest in Friday’s practice at the legendary Italian circuit Monza. His Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg was second while Ferrari took third and fourth.
“It’s been a really good day. We made good progress through our programme across the two sessions and our long run pace felt good.
We split the tyre compounds between Nico and myself, Lewis Hamilton said
“This way we could learn as much as possible going into qualifying and the race and we’re looking quite strong. We’ve still got some work to do this evening to analyse all the data and prepare the car. But I’m confident we can take the fight to the rest of the grid”, Hamilton added.
Rosberg was not completely happy with the balance
Ferrari were best of the rest in both sessions at their home track. Kimi Raikkonen was third in the morning, but more than a second off Rosberg’s pace, while team mate Sebastian Vettel was fourth. Their positions were reversed in the afternoon – Vettel posted a lap 0.453 slower than Hamilton.
The Scuderia have used its last three engine tokens for a power boost after ceding second place in the championship to Red Bull.
Vettel said he was encouraged by the improvement
Raikkonen could not find big change in the car’s behavior.
Dutch Max Verstappen, whose aggressive defending against Raikkonen at Spa last weekend is still the talk of the paddock, was fifth in the second session. The Red Bull driver insisted earlier he would not change his driving style.
“To be honest, for me Spa is done. I think in general it was a great weekend, I enjoyed it a lot. What happened in the race, that can happen sometimes but I just focus ahead of Monza. I think it was all pretty clear. I just focus ahead and I try to push again and just do my thing, and show my driving style like it was before”, he said.
Daniel Ricciardo took sixth. McLaren were surprised to have both their cars in the top 10 – Fernando Alonso 7th and Jenson Button 10th. Valtteri Bottas and Romain Grosjean were eighth and ninth in the afternoon session.
PROVISIONAL CLASSIFICATION (end of #FP2) #ItalianGP ?? pic.twitter.com/u5gXcqfQKU
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