Carlos Sainz edged out Max Verstappen to set the quickest time during the final practice hour at the Italian Grand Prix.
After topping the timesheets in Friday’s FP2 session, Sainz again produced the best time around the Monza circuit to beat Verstappen by 0.086s in the closing stages.
Ferrari team-mate Charles Leclerc had clocked the fastest first sector on his qualifying simulation run, but he ran wide at the second Lesmo and abandoned his lap. The Monegasque driver would go again and eventually climbed to fourth, albeit 0.5s adrift of Sainz.
The two Ferrari cars were separated by Lewis Hamilton, who was perplexed by the huge gap to Verstappen after momentarily leading the way.
Fernando Alonso split the Mercedes pairing in his Aston Martin, followed by the two Haas cars to continue the American outfit’s strong Friday showing.
Next up was Alex Albon, classified inside the top 10 for the third time this weekend and on the slowest Hard compound tyre that will be used in Q1 later today.
Sergio Perez rounded out the top 10 in the second Red Bull, with the Mexican’s RB19 suffering an oil leak that curtailed his running.
Liam Lawson had the upper hand over team-mate Yuki Tsunoda, with the AlphaTauri pair ending up behind Lance Stroll.
It was a tough session for McLaren, with Oscar Piastri only 14th fastest in the team’s lead car. The Australian endured a rough ride through the gravel trap at Turn 5 that required the underfloor of his car to be checked before he was impeded by Sainz in the final minutes.
Nevertheless, Piastri ended up three places ahead of Lando Norris, who plummeted from second in FP2 to 17th this morning.
Alfa Romeo and Alpine appear set for a tough weekend as both side’s cars featured in the bottom five of the order.
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