Hamilton fastest as Ferrari closes gap in FP2

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Lewis Hamilton set the fastest time of FP2 for the Italian Grand Prix as Ferrari closed the gap to Mercedes at Monza.

With Nico Rosberg having been quickest in the morning session, Hamilton hit back to lead his team-mate by 0.193s on Friday afternoon. Mercedes had been over a second clear of the rest of the field in FP1 but that gap was greatly reduced when Ferrari used the supersoft tyres for qualifying runs.

AS IT HAPPENED: Italian Grand Prix - FP2

Sebastian Vettel was within half a second of Hamilton's best time and just 0.260s slower than Rosberg in third place. With Ferrari having introduced a power unit upgrade - costing it its final three development tokens - Kimi Raikkonen was fourth, less than 0.2s adrift.

The reduced gap highlighted Mercedes' struggles with getting as much performance out of the supersoft tyres compared to its rivals, which could prove more of a problem at Monza than it was in Spa as the tyres performed better over a long run during FP2.

Red Bull was next on the timing screens as Max Verstappen was fifth and Daniel Ricciardo sixth, although Verstappen was over 0.9s off the pace on a circuit not suited to the Renault power unit.

McLaren surprised after problems for Fernando Alonso, who suffered a reported hydraulic leak which prevented him running at the start of the session. Alonso also stopped at the end of the pit lane and complained of a clutch problem, but he rejoined on superset tyres to set the seventh fastest time ahead of Valtteri Bottas, Romain Grosjean and team-mate Jenson Button.

While Bottas was inside the top ten, team-mate Felipe Massa was hampered by brake problems which saw him limited to just 20 laps and miss out on a long run. However, Williams found itself ahead of Force India following quick lap times from Sergio Perez in FP1.

Esteban Ocon's session came to an early end when his Manor stopped just before the Lesmo curves, which required a brief Virtual Safety Car period to clear. At the end of running the Frenchman was two places behind team-mate Pascal Wehrlein but still found himself ahead of both Renaults, Daniil Kvyat's Toro Rosso and Felipe Nasr's Sauber.

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Pos	Driver	Team	Time	Laps
01	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1:22.801	40
02	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1:22.994	42
03	Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	1:23.254	33
04	Kimi Raikkonen	Ferrari	1:23.427	28
05	Max Verstappen	Red Bull	1:23.732	25
06	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull	1:24.003	33
07	Fernando Alonso	McLaren	1:24.259	24
08	Valtteri Bottas	Williams	1:24.299	41
09	Romain Grosjean	Haas	1:24.516	35
10	Jenson Button	McLaren	1:24.549	28
11	Felipe Massa	Williams	1:24.556	20
12	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India	1:24.587	40
13	Sergio Perez	Force India	1:24.653	42
14	Esteban Gutierrez	Haas	1:24.674	33
15	Marcus Ericsson	Sauber	1:24.981	25
16	Pascal Wehrlein	Manor	1:25.083	38
17	Carlos Sainz	Toro Rosso	1:25.240	31
18	Esteban Ocon	Manor	1:25.275	13
19	Kevin Magnussen	Renault	1:25.555	39
20	Daniil Kvyat	Toro Rosso	1:25.614	33
21	Felipe Nasr	Sauber	1:25.643	31
22	Jolyon Palmer	Renault	1:25.833	45

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.