Italian GP: Charles Leclerc tops FP1 session at Monza

Charles Leclerc gave Ferrari fans something to be optimistic about at Monza in the first practice session of the Italian Grand Prix with him going fastest.

The Scuderia are on home turf this weekend and will be hoping to try and end the triple-header with a victory, after seeing Max Verstappen and Red Bull dominate since the summer break and win at both the Belgian Grand Prix and Dutch Grand Prix respectively.

Indeed, Max is looking quick again this weekend with him potentially on to go fastest in the dying moments of the session, before being hampered by Lando Norris in the McLaren as they approached the line, with the Briton also on a flying lap and therefore not obliged to get out of the way.

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Leclerc was fastest, then, with Carlos Sainz under a tenth of a second slower than his team-mate, whilst George Russell was third-fastest in the Mercedes. Russell found himself nearly crashing into the back of Sainz at one point during the session at the Variante della Roggia with the Spaniard slow on the exit but thankfully an incident was averted.

Lewis Hamilton recorded the fourth-fastest time ahead of Verstappen, whilst it was Esteban Ocon and Fernando Alonso in P6 and P7, with the Alpine cars once again looking fast at a high-speed circuit.

P8 was Yuki Tsunoda in the AlphaTauri ahead of Valtteri Bottas and Daniel Ricciardo who rounded off the top 10.

FP1 saw two familiar, but not regular, faces taking to the track as Nyck De Vries drove in place of Sebastian Vettel at Aston Martin and Antonio Giovinazzi got behind the wheel of the Haas car instead of Mick Schumacher.

Giovinazzi was under four tenths off of the pace of Kevin Magnussen in the other Haas, which he should be fairly