Monza, FP3: Verstappen beats Leclerc to top spot in last practice

FIA Formula One World Drivers’ Championship leader Max Verstappen beat Charles Leclerc to top spot in the final practice session for tomorrow’s Italian Grand Prix, as Nyck de Vries replaced Alex Albon at Williams for the remainder of the weekend due to illness.

Before the start of the session Williams revealed that Albon was suffering with appendicitis and that reserve driver de Vries would take over at the wheel of Albon’s FW44.

The Dutch driver, who appeared in FP1 with Aston Martin yesterday, joined the FP3 action midway through the session and ended up 14th fastest, just under a tenth of a second behind 13th-plaqced team-mate Nicholas Latifi.

In the early part of the session, Red Bull’s Sergio Pérez led the way with the Mexican driver setting the pace at 1:22.148, before Verstappen jumped to the top of the order. The Dutchman had been forced to abandon his first run after encountering traffic but his second attempt was clean and he took top spot with a lap of 1:21.872 set on medium tyres. Leclerc took second place but there was early trouble for his team-mate, Carlos Sainz, with the Spaniard spending time in the garage due to a suspected fuel system issue on his car.

Sainz returned to the action for the final third of the session and he moved up to second on soft rubber with 15 minutes remaining.

Verstappen had also moved to the red-banded Pirelli tyres and the Dutchman extended his lead at the top of the order with a lap of 1:21.252. Leclerc managed to hold second place, though the Ferrari driver ended the session 0.347s off the championship leader.

Pérez finished third, almost six tenths of a second behind his team-mate, while Sainz’s flying lap left him fourth ahead of the Alpine of Fernando Alonso who finished over a second behind Verstappen.

McLaren’s Lando Norris ended the session in sixth place, with Russell seventh for Mercedes ahead of AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda and Alpine’s Esteban Ocon. Lewis Hamilton rounded out the top 10 in the other Mercedes ahead of Alfa Romeo’s Zhou Guanyu, the other AlphaTauri of Pierre Gasly and the Williams duo of Nicholas Latifi and de Vries.