Italian GP Free Practices: the crowd in Monza pushes Sainz and Ferrari in the lead!

The Italian Grand Prix at Monza is known to be a special event for Ferrari. Every year, this race brings some extra pressure in the Ferrari camp, compared to the one they usually have to cope with as a team... Also for this reason, Monza often becomes an "all or nothing" event, a moment of the season where risking more than usual seems mandatory.

The first two free practice sessions seem to confirm that the Prancing Horse team has chosen this approach once again in 2023, both in terms of Power Unit mapping and aerodynamic setup: in this context, Carlos Sainz is the quickest of this Friday, with all the others behind the driver from Madrid. You can find below the final classifications of FP1 and FP2:

The fight for the top positions is confined to Ferrari, Red Bull and McLaren

Let's take the laptimes obtained in FP2 as the reference of our analysis, since the runs carried out by the teams in FP1 was mainly dictated by the need to save sets of tyres because of the Alternative Tyre Allocation ("ATA") scheduled for this weekend. So the morning session required pretty much a single set of Hard tyres, which will certainly be useful in the race (as well as mandatory in Q1), but which don't give an idea of the performance levels across the grid at the top of their possibilities .

Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

That said, the afternoon session showed an initial fight between two teams (Ferrari and Red Bull), to which McLaren surprisingly joined towards the end of the 60 minutes. Net of the slipstream effect that may have exacerbated the performances of Norris and Piastri in their best lap, finding the papaya team in the top positions is a clear sign of improvement: this year the high speed and low downforce tracks have been a real threat so far for the Woking team, so Monza - at least for today - seems to be the demonstration of how the working method of the engineers led by Team Principal Andrea Stella is being successful.

"We were quite slow throughout the day, right up to the last run this afternoon. Probably the cooler temperatures at the end of the day, with new tyres on the flying lap, allowed us to be more competitive, as always in these conditions. With the other compounds we struggled more, especially with the Mediums... But we also made good progress between FP1 and FP2, fitting a lower downforce wing and making other tweaks; in any case, we have other things to work on!"

Lando Norris

Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

But the headlines today deservedly are of Carlos Sainz, who also celebrates his 29th birthday today. Wanting to be a bit rhetorical, one might say that the best birthday present received is from himself: the harmony between the Spaniard and his SF-23 immediately appeared excellent, despite him and his teammate Leclerc (then in P6 at +0"361) suffered from porpoising in the morning, due to the set-up with a ride height that proved to be too low.

"Today was a positive Friday, the car seems to be in good shape also thanks to the track characteristics more suitable for us. We will continue to work to find even more performance, especially in the long runs, where I think there is room for improvement. After such a weekend difficult like Zandvoort, we put the car out on track and for some reason it immediately adapted to the track much better: it was much easier to choose the set-up! This doesn't mean that tomorrow we'll be in pole position and we'll win the race on Sunday, but at least the sensations on the car are much better. I want to thank all the fans, it's nice to be driving in front of them here in Monza!”

Carlos Sainz

"We were really good today on the high fuel runs... for my part, I struggled a little more with low fuel, but I think we know what to do for tomorrow. I went a bit in a different direction, so we need to reset and concentrate especially on the qualifying laps, because that's where we had the most difficulties with the balance of the car"

Charles Leclerc

The 2h30' break between FP1 and FP2 meant the mechanics and engineers of the Maranello team had time to make improvements in this regard, and the good news is that - contrary to many other rounds in 2023 - the "compromise" set-up didn't sacrifice the speed exhibited until then. Indeed, the laptimes in the afternoon suggest that it has increased it, as well as making the porpoising disappear!

Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

Friday at Red Bull, although certainly not disastrous, was less brilliant than usual: the reason lies in a setup error (we don't know how much it had to do with some comparison purposes between the two cars of Verstappen and Perez). In FP1 the Mexican driver had at his disposal a RB19 equipped with a low downforce rear wing; the World Champion, for his part, had a much more loaded spec - which proved to be excellent in corners like Lesmo and the Parabolica (from 2022 named after Michele Alboreto), but too penalizing on the long straights of Monza.

"We tried different types of rear wing to study the right path to take, even if it's a bit complicated at Monza. For my part, today could have gone better, but we need to optimize some things when going from low to high speed [. ..] There were some interruptions in FP2, so I struggled to find the right pace: the long run went quite well, while in the qualifying simulations I was blocked in sector 2. We didn't actually do many laps in long run mode, but we got an idea like everyone else"

Max Verstappen

"I had a bit of understeer coming out of the Alboreto, I tried to keep the car on track and I felt like I had it under control, but I hit the gravel and that's the end of the story. The damage is small, and we didn't lose plenty of running time, so no big deal [...] On the positive side, the car feels good, I feel comfortable and I think we are in a good position for the rest of the weekend. We worked very hard and found some changes, I hope to demonstrate them tomorrow and Sunday"

Sergio Perez

In FP2 Verstappen switched to a setup identical to Perez's, but despite this we didn't find the difference in performance that usually exists between the two. Everything was going well for Checo, until 10 minutes from the end (while everyone was engaged in a race simulation), he lost control of his car and went slightly into the barriers, right in the Alboreto corner! A brief red flag interruption then allowed the crashed RB19 to be brought back to the pits, and the session restarted for a couple of laps...

Among the Mercedes powered teams, the factory team has to contend with Williams and Aston Martin!

Behind the three teams mentioned in the opening paragraph, we find another group of three teams: the other Mercedes-powered teams, separated by a few hundredths of a second in their best laptimes. Among them, the quickest car seems to be the Williams FW46, which in the hands of Albon climbed to P7: an even more valuable result, if we consider that the laptime that earned this position was obtained on Medium tyres, against everyone else's Softs.

Jake Grant / Motorsport Images

The Monza circuit, due to its inherent characteristics, represents a testing ground that set Williams and Aston Martin apart. The former was deadly fast on the straights thanks to its low drag; the latter was, instead, very effective on the (few) corners betweenthe numerius straights of the track... My opinion in this regard is that here the Grove team is in a better shape for the race than the their rivals based at Silverstone, because in close race conditions (as often happens), the low top speed of the AMR23 could relegate Alonso and Stroll behind overall slower cars. Something similar to what happened to Norris during the Belgian Grand Prix.

Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

Speaking of Stroll, the Canadian driver started his weekend in Italy very badly: in the morning he had to hand over the wheel to Felipe Drugovich (who as a rookie has two FP1 sessions available in the season), while in the afternoon a hydraulic issue didn't allow him to complete even a flying lap, stopping the car during his installation lap, out of the "variante Ascari".

Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

What to say about Mercedes? The Brackley-based team is in the awkward position where, if they don't have a good execution on Saturday, they could qualify behind the cars to which Mercedes supplies the Power Units! The reason for the poor performance of the English-German team lies, needless to say, in the chosen setup: one that Russell appreciated only in the runs on the Mediums, while Hamilton decidedly deemed it insufficient to fight in the top positions...

"It was a relatively normal Friday for me. Reliability was good, and we got the job done we needed to. There's a lot to learn from today and we'll work a bit tonight to try and improve for Saturday. as always we manage to do. I know the team will do a great job overnight to improve the set-up and balance of the car, so that we can be quicker tomorrow"

Lewis Hamilton

"It's great to be back at Monza and driving the car at these speeds and low downforce levels. The characteristics are very different to what we had at Zandvoort, and it's something that's fun to adapt to. The car performed quite well, but we have some improvements to make on the Soft tyres"

George Russell

The last 4 teams, according to the classification, are Haas, Alfa Romeo, Alpine and Alpha Tauri. I deliberately avoid providing a judgement on them, as the small gaps that separate them could be subverted if work on the simulator during the night between Friday and Saturday were to give useful indications for improvement to this or that team. In any case, I don't think it's very likely that in normal qualifying and race conditions the above-mentioned teams can reach the points paying positions...

A look at the race pace simulation carried out in FP2

Finally, let's try to understand how to include the important factor called "tyre degradation" in the performance analysis of free practices. The race simulation conducted in the last 16 minutes of FP2 was even shorter, due to the 6 minutes lost during the red flag interruption due to Perez's accident: for this reason, nobody was able to run long enough stints to induce a serious threat of performance drop due to the tyres; however, to understand the pace kapt in full tank conditions, it's sufficient to report the laptimes obtained...

  • Verstappen (M): 1'25"807 - 1'25"733 - 1'25"286
  • Perez (M): 1'25"635 - 1'25"400 - 1'25"333 - 1'25"494
  • Sainz (M): 1'26"084 - 1'26"063 - 1'26"087
  • Leclerc (M): 1'25"846
  • Hamilton (M): 1'26"950 - 1'27"002 - 1'26"796 - 1'26"896 - 1'26"432 - 1'26"577 - 1'26"499
  • Russell (M): 1'26"262
  • Albon (M): 1'25"717
  • Norris (M): 1'26"135

Among the drivers mentioned, the best race pace seems to be in the hands of Sergio Perez, who in fact was pretty happy with how his Italian Grand Prix has started. With due precautions, even the pace that the SF-23 allows Leclerc and Sainz to keep can lead us to think - in case of a normal tyre degradation level - that the Ferraris can worry at least the two McLarens.

Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

Saturday in Monza sees FP3 at 12.30 CET and qualifying at 16.00 CET.In qualifying, as happened in Hungary, we'll see the Alternative Tyre Allocation format once again: Q1 only on Hard tyres, Q2 only on Mediums and Q3 only on Softs.

I remind you that you can also follow Race Analysis through the social media channels on Instagram, X (ex Twitter) and YouTube. See you tomorrow!

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