Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton led a team one-two during FP3 at the Italian Grand Prix, setting the pace with a 1:20.117s laptime.
Russell, meanwhile settled for second, 0.093s back from his teammate – WIth Ferrar’s Charles Leclerc in third, who was just a tenth back from Hamilton’s benchmark.
Blue skies, warm summer weather and grandstands chock full of Tifosi greeted the 20 Formula 1 cars out onto the Monza circuit for the third and final practice session of the Italian Grand Prix.
As the session progressed without a hitch to halfway distance, Alex Albon placed his Williams atop the timesheets with a 1:20.596s effort ahead of Leclerc and Mercedes, George Russell.
Meanwhile, Verstappen languished in eighth place, although yet to bolt on the soft tyre.
Ferrari later stole a march on the rest of the field to take first and second courtesy of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sianz, before McLaren’s Lando Norris split the Scuderia pair.
But Mercedes usurped the lot to top the session in first and second with Hamilton and Russell respectively.
Leclerc finished best of the rest 0.109s back from Hamilton and ahead of the McLaren duo of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris rounding out the top five.
Verstappen improved from eighth early on to finish sixth in the session, albeit a far cry from what he expects of the whole Red Bull team.
That left Carlos Sainz in seventh and Alex Albon in eighth, with the Anglo-Thai driver’s rookie teammate Franco Colapinto impressing to finish inside the top-10 in ninth.
Haas, Nico Hulkenberg fared well to round out the top-10, better than team-mate Kevin Magnussen who finished 16th fastest and wound up having to stop on track at the end of the session with an apparent technical issue.
Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso finished 11th with Daniel Ricciardo leading the way for RB in 12th, one place and 0.064s ahead of his team-mate Yuki Tsunoda.
Next up in the order were Alpine’s Pierre Gasly and Alonso’s Aston team-mate Lance Stroll in 14th and 15th respectively.
Behind Magnussen and rounding out the order were Alpine’s Esteban Ocon in 17th and Sergio Perez in 18th, who will be hoping for far better performance in Saturday’s qualifying session.
As ever, Sauber was the slowest of the bunch, with Valtteri Bottas 1.240s adrift of the top-running pace in 19th and Zhou Guanyu a further seven-tenths back in dead last.
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