Russell keeps Mercedes out front at Monza
Three practice sessions at Monza, and Mercedes have controlled two of them by a comfortable margin. George Russell went quickest again this morning, a 1:22.219 that left Lewis Hamilton 0.226s adrift and Max Verstappen 0.350s back in third.
Russell had already headed Friday’s second session by 0.120s from Charles Leclerc. Ferrari’s Friday morning one-two, with Leclerc ahead of Hamilton on the debut of the team’s upgraded engine, now looks like the outlier rather than the trend. Leclerc never strung a clean qualifying simulation together on Saturday. He aborted a soft-tyre run and ended up sixth, almost half a second off the pace.
Kimi Antonelli was fourth for Mercedes, 0.361s back, though his Sunday is already settled. The Italian carries an engine penalty and starts from the back of the grid at his home race, which hands Russell a clear road in a title fight the two of them have been trading all season. Lando Norris took fifth for McLaren, Arvid Lindblad put the Racing Bulls seventh, and Oscar Piastri could only manage eighth after another awkward practice.
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Hamilton and Verstappen renew an old argument
The last two minutes of the session had nothing to do with lap times. Hamilton and Verstappen ran wheel to wheel down the main straight scrapping for track position, and Verstappen dived down the inside at the first chicane. Hamilton took to the run-off. Both drivers binned their laps.
“Yeah, he caused that,” Verstappen reported over the radio. Hamilton countered that he had been blocked. Anyone who watched the pair collide at that same braking zone in 2021 will recognise the choreography. They now race for Ferrari and Red Bull rather than Mercedes and Red Bull, and it has changed nothing about the temperature between them.
Slipstreams and a season of grudges
Monza rewards a tow more than almost any circuit on the calendar, and Ferrari have said they will not sacrifice one driver to give the other a run. That leaves Hamilton and Leclerc to sort out their own laps on a track where a slipstream can be worth more than a week of set-up work.
Pierre Gasly and Franco Colapinto rounded out the top ten for Alpine, a team that has spent the past 24 hours arguing about an entirely different Grand Prix.
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