Italian GP: Vettel leads Verstappen in ultra-close FP3

Vettel’s Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc was the benchmark on Friday and set the initial pace in Saturday afternoon’s one-hour session.

But Leclerc made only a tiny improvement on a “useless” final run, allowing Vettel to leapfrog him for top spot and Verstappen to showcase impressive performance in his Honda-powered Red Bull.

Drivers were not allowed to take to the track until 10 minutes into the session to allow race organisers to complete fence repairs and remove a sausage kerb that had caused an enormous crash in the Formula 3 race that preceded FP3.

Leclerc hit the front after the first meaningful qualifying simulations and his 1m20.452s headed Vettel by 0.16s with 20 minutes of the session remaining.

On their final runs, Vettel improved twice – he overhauled Leclerc on a 1m20.331s on his first flying lap, then cemented top spot with a 1m20.294s on the second.

Leclerc, by contrast, only improved by half a tenth, bemoaning it as “a bit of a useless run”.

That meant he slipped behind Verstappen, who will not contest qualifying properly because he has a grid penalty this weekend, and Valtteri Bottas’s Mercedes.

Verstappen and Red Bull will be buoyed by Honda’s upgrade Spec 4 engine powering him to a lap time so close to Vettel on such a power-sensitive circuit.

Bottas nipped into third on a 1m20.403s, exactly the same time as Leclerc and ahead because he had set the laptime first.

World championship leader Lewis Hamilton was only sixth-fastest, behind a rapid lap from Renault’s Daniel Ricciardo.

Nico Hulkenberg backed up his Renault teammate with the seventh-fastest time as both lapped within half a second of Vettel.

Alex Albon dropped his left-side wheels into the gravel exiting the second chicane on his final qualifying simulation, and so only ended up with the eighth-fastest time as he failed to improve.

“I’m amazed how much the car changed,” said a bemused Albon. “Maybe the track gripped up more but I had no grip at all.”

Antonio Giovinazzi (Alfa Romeo) and Daniil Kvyat (Toro Rosso) completed the top 10.

Some laptimes were deleted during the session, including Leclerc’s second-fastest effort (at the time) with 10 minutes to go.

Lance Stroll lost his quickest time, a 1m21.554s, and fell to the back of the midfield group and only ahead of the two Williams drivers.

Session results

Cla	#	Driver		Chassis	Laps	Time	Gap
1	5	Sebastian Vettel		Ferrari	14	1'20.294
2	33	Max Verstappen		Red Bull	11	1'20.326	0.032
3	77	Valtteri Bottas		Mercedes	23	1'20.403	0.109
4	16	Charles Leclerc		Ferrari	14	1'20.403	0.109
5	3	Daniel Ricciardo		Renault	11	1'20.564	0.270
6	44	Lewis Hamilton		Mercedes	21	1'20.595	0.301
7	27	Nico Hulkenberg		Renault	13	1'20.752	0.458
8	23	Alex Albon		Red Bull	17	1'20.827	0.533
9	99	Antonio Giovinazzi		Alfa Romeo	15	1'20.881	0.587
10	26	Daniil Kvyat		Toro Rosso	20	1'20.945	0.651
11	55	Carlos Sainz Jr.		McLaren	21	1'20.949	0.655
12	11	Sergio Perez		Racing Point	15	1'21.003	0.709
13	10	Pierre Gasly		Toro Rosso	22	1'21.073	0.779
14	4	Lando Norris		McLaren	21	1'21.292	0.998
15	7	Kimi Raikkonen		Alfa Romeo	19	1'21.325	1.031
16	20	Kevin Magnussen		Haas	16	1'21.336	1.042
17	8	Romain Grosjean		Haas	16	1'21.621	1.327
18	18	Lance Stroll		Racing Point	17	1'21.639	1.345
19	63	George Russell		Williams	22	1'22.374	2.080
20	88	Robert Kubica		Williams	21	1'22.758	2.464
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