Lewis Hamilton quickest in final practice as heavy Carlos Sainz crash disrupts sprint preparation

Italian Grand Prix

Hamilton quickest in final practice as heavy Sainz crash disrupts sprint preparation

Sainz crashed at Ascari as teams gathered tyre data

Ewan Gale

Saturday 11 September 2021 13:06

Lewis Hamilton topped final practice for the Italian Grand Prix in a session primarily focused on race simulation runs ahead of the second F1 sprint.

The Mercedes driver ran on all three tyre compounds during the hour of running and was two-tenths faster than team-mate Valtteri Bottas.

The session mirrored the running seen at Silverstone during the first trial weekend for sprint, with teams gathering long-run data ahead of the 100km sprint and the grand prix.

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The grid for the sprint was locked in qualifying on Friday evening with cars entering parc fermé conditions, meaning attention was solely focused on tyre and fuel data.

Carlos Sainz disrupted the session for 10 minutes with a heavy crash at the Ascari chicane, leaving his Ferrari mechanics a mountain to climb to repair his car on a Saturday for the second weekend in a row.

Red Bull initially showed good pace early on in the session which pointed to a race focus from the team this weekend before Mercedes picked up the pace late on in the session to take a one-two.

Hamilton's fastest time was a one minute, 23.246 with only Bottas, Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez within a second of his time.

Esteban Ocon was fifth fastest ahead of Robert Kubica and Antonio Giovinazzi as the Alfa Romeo's showed good pace, albeit likely with lower fuel loads than the competition around them.

Fernando Alonso was eight, Pierre Gasly ninth and Lando Norris tenth but Charles Leclerc's concerns continued with a coded message saying he could not continue ending his session early.

The Monegasque suffered from a power unit issue in qualifying and swapped to a previously used engine ahead of the session.

The crucial element of the session was the lack of degradation on the soft tyre meaning teams will potentially elect to run the red-walled compound during the 18-lap event later on.

Mercedes and Aston Martin both ran hard tyres with an eye kept on the grand prix proper tomorrow afternoon.