Italian GP: Lewis Fastest on an Eventful Practice Day at Monza

The second stop of the double-header after the summer break takes Formula 1 from Zandvoort to the Royal Park in Monza.

It was an eventful Friday for the team in Italy, with two red flags, one of which was unfortunately caused by our junior driver Kimi Antonelli.

Lewis, meanwhile, finished the second practice session with the fastest time of the day. George finished in P6.

Lewis started FP2 with his first run of the weekend on the Medium tyres. For his second run, he switched to a fresh set of Soft tyres, which he had used throughout FP1. On these tyres he set the fastest time of the session, three thousandths of a second ahead of Lando Norris.

George’s car needed some extra work by the mechanics in between the two sessions to repair the damage caused by Kimi’s shunt in FP1, so he joined the rest of the grid 20 minutes into FP2.

George completed his first laps of the day on the Medium tyres before the session was red-flagged because of an accident involving Kevin Magnussen at Turn 7. This interrupted George's run and further reduced his track time.

The session resumed with 18 minutes remaining. Lewis continued his work on the Medium tyres he had run earlier in the session. George had another run on the same Medium tyres as before, before finishing the session with a run on new Soft tyres.

Significant track changes

The team brought some minor tweaks to the rear wing with them to Italy to maximise efficiency on the long straights.

But it's not just the cars that have changed for the Italian Grand Prix, the track at the Royal Park in Monza has also had significant changes. The entire track has been resurfaced. In addition, several kerbs have been flattened, including T1-T2 and T8-T10.

The team will now spend the night analysing the data from the two sessions and prepare for FP3 on Saturday morning. The session starts at 12:30 local time (11:30 BST), followed by qualifying at 16:00 local time (15:00 BST).

George Russell

Firstly, I’m glad to see that Kimi was OK. It’s never nice to see a crash that size and the first thing that matters is that he wasn’t hurt. The mechanics did a great job to get the car ready for FP2. We got a good 30 minutes of running before and after the red flag so a big thank you to them.

The car seems to be looking good. Lewis did a great job to top the timing screens. I had a couple of push lap efforts at the end of FP2 but was mainly focused on the long run. The resurfaced track meant that it looked to be ramping up quite a lot throughout the day. We need to be alive to it evolving over the rest of the weekend. We’ve got a lot of good data to go through, even though it wasn’t the most productive Friday I’ve ever had on my side.

Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director

We’ve had a busy day here in Monza. Kimi's accident luckily didn't do any damage to him, but the car took a big hit. Repairing it ate into George's session a little bit. That cost us some learning but we'll hopefully recover that ground in FP3 tomorrow.

Lewis had two strong sessions. The car seems to be working well, but there is not much to choose between the top few teams; it all looks very tight and from today's data there doesn't seem to be more than a couple of tenths separating the front of the field. For the race, managing the tyres looks like it is going to be a challenge. The new surface is causing quite high degradation and as soon as you push hard, the tyres start to drop. It is not an easy track to employ the necessary management without leaving yourself vulnerable to being overtaking, but it should lead to an interesting race.

2024 Italian GP FP2 Result

2024 Italian GP FP1 Result