Subdued start for Russell and Hamilton in Monza

It wasn't the greatest start to the Italian GP weekend for Mercedes drivers George Russell and Lewis Hamilton, with both men struggling for pace in Friday's practice sessions.

Russell was quicker than Hamilton in both sessions, ending FP1 in fifth and then dropping to P9 in the later afternoon practice. Having finishes first practice on a single set of hard tyres, he used both medium and soft sets in FP2.

"The car was feeling reasonably good, but we have some improvements to make on the soft tyre," he reported after the end of the day's track time at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza.

"The high fuel pace was looking pretty strong, so the focus tomorrow will be on finding more speed for qualifying," he added. Russell also had a sluggish start last week in Zandvoort but bounced back to qualify for the Dutch GP in third.

Conditions are rather different this week, both in terms of the much warmer and brighter weather and in the nature of the circuit itself.

"It's great to be back in Monza and driving the car at these high speeds and with low downforce levels," Russell said. "The characteristics are very different to what we had last week in Zandvoort and that's something that it's fun to adapt to."

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As for Hamilton, the seven-time world champion was eighth fastest on hard tyres in FP1, but changes to his wing settings left him with increased downforce that put him down on speed in the afternoon.

When the new settings didn't deliver the expected gains in the corners he pleaded with his race engineer to come back and make changes only to be told that there was no time so do so in a session curtailed by two red flags.

As a result Hamilton continued to circulate on a single set of mediums for the rest of the afternoon, opting not to throw a set of softs into the campaign at this stage given that it was the second Alternative Tyre Allocation test of 2023.

"It was a relatively normal Friday programme for me," he said afterward. "The reliability was strong, and we got through the work that we needed to, checking off the different tests we had to do.

"There's lots of learning from today, and we will have a bit of work tonight to try and improve for Saturday - as we always manage to do. I know that the team will do great work overnight to improve the set-up and car balance so we can be quicker tomorrow."

Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin admitted that today's practice hadn't been smooth sailing for the team.

"It's been a messy day, partly with red flags but also because we've not got the car in a good place at the moment," he said. "That means we have a bit of work to do overnight to get the setup in the right place for the rest of the weekend.

"Single lap and long run both need work if we want to be competitive," he acknowledged. "There's not much else to say; we just need to get on with the job of sorting the car out."

At least the team can put questions about driver contracts in its rear view mirror after Hamilton and Russell were both confirmed as having signed contract extensions keeping them at Brackley until the end of 2025.

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