#ItalianGP FP2: @Carlossainz55 quickest ahead of @LandoNorris. #F1

Sainz Italian GP FP2 – Carlos Sainz topped the afternoon FP2 session at the Ferrari’s home Italian GP narrowly ahead of McLaren’s Lando Norris as Red Bull’s Sergio Perez who suffered a shunt and brought out a red flag near the end, rounded out the top three.

Sainz posted the benchmark of a 1:21.355 on the C5 red side-walled softer compound and was a very narrow 0.019 seconds quicker than Norris with Perez a further 0.185 off the Ferrari driver’s time-sheet topping time.

McLaren’s Oscar Piastri pipped reigning world champion Max Verstappen to fourth, which was twice stopped, with Charles Leclerc, the slower of the two Ferrari SF-23 entries throughout practice at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza, sixth in-front of the “Tifosi”.

Before any of the drivers could register a lap-time, the session was stopped when Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll came to a halt just past the Ascari Chicane.

Having missed the opening Free Practice 1 session with Aston Martin reserve Felipe Drugovich piloting his AMR 23 racer, the Canadian was forced to stop at this part of the circuit due to a fuel system issue.

Aston Martin attempted to fire up the AMR23 remotely, but Stroll was eventually forced to jump out of the car as the red flags were waved, these remaining in place until the restart with ten minutes on the clock.

After this, Verstappen emerged and set a 1:22.259 on the C4 yellow-marked mediums, before almost 10 minutes later the Ferrari duo flew in-front, Sainz becoming the time-topper with a 1:21.565.

A long lack of action followed before the drivers returned on the C5 softs, the Williams pairing and Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso, already tried the red side-walled tyre early in the proceedings – with the times set to fall rapidly due to the softs being run and with track evolution.

The Ferrari duo lead the way just past the halfway point and looked on course to gain, with Leclerc posting a personal best effort on the softs, but still could not top team-mate Sainz’s medium rubber time, with the Spaniard aborting his initial qualifying simulation run due to locking the rear at the Variante Della Roggia Chicane.

Perez therefore jumped ahead with his soft tyre runs to set a 1:21.540, before he towed Verstappen to the Variane Del Rettifilo chicane before the championship leader continued solo on his opening softs hot-lap, which ended with him still off Sainz’s previous benchmark.

Next through were the McLaren duo, with Norris flying to the top of the pile with a 1:21.374, before Sainz completed a second flying lap on the softs to finally reclaim P1 with a 1:21.355.

With just over 20 minutes left on the clock, Verstappen, who encountered traffic at the second Lesmo on his qualifying simulation run, requested to have another shot, but was denied by his Red Bull team.

This set the classification, with Williams Racing’s Alexander Albon seventh, but his best effort during the lower fuel run was set on the mediums.

This reflected the unusual run programmes teams are utilising as part of Formula 1’s second Alternative Tyre Allocation experiment.

Mercedes’ George Russell did do a soft tyre run, but could only trail Alonso in eighth and ninth respectively.

Haas F1 Team’s Nico Hulkenberg completed the top 10 and in-front of team-mate Kevin Magnussen who was 11th and Alfa Romeo’s Valtteri Bottas who took 12th.

BWT Alpine F1 Team’s Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon were 13th and 15th respectively as AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda split the duo in 14th.

Williams Racing’s Logan Sargeant placed 16th in the classification and ahead of Mercedes’ Sir Lewis Hamilton who took 17th and did not complete a qualifying simulation run on the softs.

Scuderia AlphaTauri’s Liam Lawson was 18th and in-front of Alfa Romeo’s Zhou Guanyu and the aforementioned Aston Martin of Stroll who brought up the rear.

Perez had the most dramatic moment of the session when he lost the rear of his RB19 racer at the Parabolica with nine minutes left on the clock after dipping his front-left wheel off the circuit and spinning backwards through the gravel trap at the long-fast and sweeping hairpin.

The Mexican had missed most of the tyre wall as he fought the spin, but did touch the barriers with his rear wing, which escaped significant damage and the red flags came out again.

The session went back to green for four minutes, but the order did not change.

You can see the full Formula 1 Pirelli Gran Premio D’Italia 2023 Free Practice 2 Results Classification at the link: https://www.formula1.com/en/results.html/2023/races/1218/italy/practice-2.html

#ItalianGP FP1: @Max33Verstappen tops time-sheets ahead of @Carlossainz55. #F1

#F1 @Pirelli #ItalianGP 2023 Preview. #Formula1 #ItalianGrandPrix