After being narrowly shaded by Nico Rosberg in the opening practice session for the Italian Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton upped the pace in the afternoon session to eclipse his Mercedes team-mate by just under 0.2s.
While Mercedes dominated in FP1, finishing well ahead of Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen, the gap was closed by some margin in the afternoon as the team’s set their fastest times on supersoft-shod qualifying runs. Compared with their rivals Mercedes looked to be having a harder time getting the best out of this weekend’s softest compound and that allowed Vettel to set a best time of 1:23.254, 0.453 adrift of Hamilton after Ferrari finished a full second behind in the earlier outing.
Vettel was backed up in the order by team-mate Raikkonen who finished just under 0.2s behind the four-time champion.
After a low-key opening session in which Max Verstappen finished eighth, two places ahead of team-mate Daniel Ricciardo, red Bull enjoyed a more productive afternoon with Verstappen in fifth place, three tenths off Raikkonen, and with Ricciardo sixth, a further three tenths back.
Fernando Alonso impressed for McLaren with seventh place ahead of Williams’ Valtteri Bottas, while Romain Groshean, who was sixth for Haas in the morning using the uprated Ferrari engine brough to Monza this weekend, finished in ninth place with Jenson Button just under three hundredths of a second further back in tenth.
After Sergio Perez gave Force India a good start to the weekend with fifth place in the morning the team slipped back in the afternoon, with Nico Hulkenberg in P12 behind Williams’ Felipe Massa and Perez in P13.
2016 Italian Grand Prix – Free Practice 21 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 1:22.801 402 Nico Rosberg Mercedes 1:22.994 423 Sebastian Vettel Ferrari 1:23.254 334 Kimi Raikkonen Ferrari 1:23.427 285 Max Verstappen Red Bull 1:23.732 256 Daniel Ricciardo Red Bull 1:24.003 337 Fernando Alonso McLaren 1:24.259 248 Valtteri Bottas Williams 1:24.299 419 Romain Grosjean Haas 1:24.516 3510 Jenson Button McLaren 1:24.549 2811 Felipe Massa Williams 1:24.556 2012 Nico Hulkenberg Force India 1:24.587 4013 Sergio Perez Force India 1:24.653 4214 Esteban Gutierrez Haas 1:24.674 3315 Marcus Ericsson Sauber 1:24.981 2516 Pascal Wehrlein Manor 1:25.083 3817 Carlos Sainz Toro Rosso 1:25.240 3118 Esteban Ocon Manor 1:25.275 1319 Kevin Magnussen Renault 1:25.555 3920 Daniil Kvyat Toro Rosso 1:25.614 3321 Felipe Nasr Sauber 1:25.643 3122 Jolyon Palmer Renault 1:25.833 45
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