Official F1 Journal Formula 1 Friday Round Up- Monza

The F1 circus returns to the Monza after arguably the best race of the season so far at Zandvoort. Can Monza give us somthing to rival the Dutch Grand Prix, well history says yes.
Lets hope for the Tifosi's sake the Ferrari's give them the show they are hoping for and with Monza being Max Verstappen's worst track statistically so a Scuderia win could be on the cards.

Practice 1 

The first headline of Practice 1 at Monza was the addition of 2022 F2 Champion Felipe Drugovich taking the helm of Lance Strolls Aston Martin, along with Ferrari and Mclaren bringing major front and rear wing updates to their cars for Monza.
The practice 1 session started with the teams taking the time they need to test updates and the cars long and fast lap pace, 
​

'Despite it being their home race, Alfa Romeo had a terrible day with both cars suffering a software issue and then both drivers complaining that the 'rear is stalling' with Bottas calling the car 'undriveable'.
From there it was a very amicable practice for all with teams and drivers managing to get into their long runs and working on the car, like Mclaren who had the highvis paint out earlier than others. At the end pf the session Verstappen topped the times followed closely by Sainz and Perez in 3rd and the sister Ferrari of Leclerc in 4th.

Practice 1 Result 

1 VER    2 SAI
3 PER    4 LEC 
5 RUS    6 ALO
7 NOR    8 HAM
9 TSU    10 ALB
11 PIA    12 SAR
13 LAW  14 GAS
15 BOT   16 HUL
17 OCO   18 DRU
19 MAG   20 ZHO

Practice 2- Dry 

It was a mixed bag of tyres at the start of FP2, Saegeant was the only man out on the soft at the start of the session, with Piastri, Hulkenberg, Stroll and Magnussen ran the hard and the rest of the grid ran the medium tyres. Strolls hard tyre running was brief as just​ before the Ascari the car lost power and he was forced to retire from the session despite the teams best effort to fix the car on track and a red flag was necessary to recover the car. 
The running got go again at with 50 minutes left of the session we saw the first pace laps start to hit the board just 4 minutes later. 

But like the first practice traffic and fighting to get the powerful tow practiced before Qualifying. But despite this the Ferrari's looked fast with Sainz topping the times early on and only getting faster for the rest of the session, Piastri struggled to get a fast lap after being blocked by the 'tow traffic' but did in the end manage to hook up a lap that put him inside the top 10.
30 to go and it was still a mixed bag or tyres, now with Alonso, Albon & Magnussen on softs, Piastri & Hulkenberg on hards and the rest of the feild were running the Mediums. 

27 minutes to go and the times really started to tumble the Mclarens set fastest laps, quickly beaten by Carlos Sainz and from then on teams started their long run high fue runs and we started to see the strengths of the different teams race pace in the range of tyres they had on in FP2 until with ( minutes to go Perez has a huge moment coming around turn 11 gojng sideways across the gravel, wich will have hurt the floor of the Redbull. After the Monza Marshalls did a great job of rapidly cleaning the Redbull car off the track left the cars with 3 minutes on the clock. All the cars came out and went for a final lap but for the most part the driers left the pits so the could make their practice starts at the end off the session. 
Sainz finished top, Norris 2nd and Perez 3rd.

Practice 2 Result

1 SAI     2 NOR
3 PER    4 PIA
5 VER    6 LEC
7 ALB     8 ALO
9 RUS    10 HUL
11 MAG   12 BOT
13 GAS    14 TSU
15 OCO    16 SAR
17 HAM    18 LAW
19 ZHO    20 STR 

Joanna Blackmore
​Writer @ F1 Journal