Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFormula 1

Hamilton heads Vettel in closer FP3 at Monza

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Lewis Hamilton completed a clean sweep of practice sessions at the Italian Grand Prix as Ferrari closed the gap in FP3 at Monza.

With Mercedes enjoying a large advantage in FP1, Sebastian Vettel had already been closer in the second session before continuing that trend on Saturday morning. With damp conditions resulting in slower lap times than Friday, Hamilton set the pace with a 1:24.544 but had Vettel for close company as the Ferrari was just 0.26s adrift.

Nico Rosberg was third but 0.3s slower than his Mercedes team-mate, while Williams made its expected improvement to end the session fourth and fifth with Valtteri Bottas and Felipe Massa respectively. Pastor Maldonado finished FP3 in sixth place for Lotus after a late lap on the drying circuit, with Kimi Raikkonen highlighting the closer nature of the session in seventh by setting a time 0.7s slower than Hamilton.

Heavy thunderstorms overnight had left the track damp at the start of Saturday's running, with installation laps taking place on intermediate tyres. The Toro Rosso pair of Max Verstappen and Carlos Sainz were keen to set times in the tricky conditions, but with the sun drying the track quickly most drivers waited until half way through the session before taking on slicks.

With Sergio Perez finishing eighth fastest ahead of Marcus Ericsson and Romain Grosjean, there was no Renault-powered car in the top ten. Daniel Ricciardo suffered more reliability issues, with his engineer telling him not to change gear as he came to a halt at the second chicane, ending his running with 15 minutes remaining.

Ricciardo ended the session slowest as a result, with Will Stevens taking advantage of the conditions to post the 15th quickest time, just behind the two McLarens and ahead of Verstappen, Daniil Kvyat, Sainz, Roberto Merhi and Ricciardo.

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Pos	Driver	Team	Time	Laps
01	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1:24.544	18
02	Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	1:24.808	12
03	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1:24.843	19
04	Valtteri Bottas	Williams	1:24.946	14
05	Felipe Massa	Williams	1:25.165	14
06	Pastor Maldonado	Lotus	1:25.242	11
07	Kimi Raikkonen	Ferrari	1:25.244	13
08	Sergio Perez	Force India	1:25.515	14
09	Marcus Ericsson	Sauber	1:25.692	17
10	Romain Grosjean	Lotus	1:25.747	8
11	Felipe Nasr	Sauber	1:25.912	17
12	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India	1:26.141	13
13	Fernando Alonso	McLaren	1:26.632	9
14	Jenson Button	McLaren	1:26.750	14
15	Will Stevens	Manor	1:28.123	13
16	Max Verstappen	Toro Rosso	1:28.215	25
17	Daniil Kvyat	Red Bull	1:28.591	10
18	Carlos Sainz	Toro Rosso	1:28.628	23
19	Roberto Merhi	Manor	1:29.117	11
20	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull	1:29.900	7

Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.