Bottas leads McLaren duo in final Italian GP practice

Valtteri Bottas led the final Formula 1 practice session of the 2020 Italian Grand Prix weekend at Monza, but Carlos Sainz Jr, Lando Norris, and Daniel Ricciardo denied Mercedes a clean sweep of 1-2s.

Despite this being a shorter session than either of Friday’s, teams were content to do little running in the early minutes, with Sainz leaving it until nearly a third of the way in to record the session’s first flying lap – which his engineer celebrated with a jokey “you’re P1, purple in all sectors” message.

The Mercedes duo’s first flying laps came a few minutes later as track activity increased exponentially, and they took the Silver Arrows first and second – with Bottas then jumping ahead of Lewis Hamilton on his second try.

But the soft-shod Mercedes were then surpassed by Max Verstappen on mediums, the Dutchman going a tenth and a half clear of Bottas with a 1m20.456s coming up to the halfway point of FP3.

After a new set of softs, Bottas responded the fastest lap of the weekend so far, a 1m20.089s, whereas Hamilton’s first push lap on fresh softs was compromised by a big snap exiting Variante del Rettifilo and scrapped.

The championship leader had another go at a fast lap next time by, but was three and a half tenths off Bottas – a gap big enough for both Norris and Ricciardo to slot into a couple of minutes later.

Yet Ricciardo’s Renault RS20 then developed an issue and he was forced to pull over exiting Variante della Roggia, the stoppage bringing out the red flag which was only lifted with three minutes left on the clock.

According to Renault, Ricciardo suffered a suspected fuel pump failure, and with the part being replaceable the team expects to have the car ready for qualifying.

Though everyone but Ricciardo ventured out of the pits, most did not manage to improve their times – but Sainz did, leaping up from 17th to second, just over two tenths behind Bottas and ahead of his McLaren team-mate Norris.

Norris and Ricciardo completed the top four ahead of Hamilton and Verstappen, the latter failing to improve his medium-tyre time on softs.

Verstappen’s team-mate Albon did go quicker on softs than mediums but was still a tenth behind his fellow Red Bull driver in seventh, while Esteban Ocon – who impressed on the harder-compound tyre early in the session – had to settle for eighth.

Lance Stroll and Sergio Perez completed the top 10, Perez demoting the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc in the final seconds of the session.

Though they had impressed on Friday, the AlphaTauris were down in 12th and 13th in FP3, with Pierre Gasly narrowly ahead of Daniil Kvyat.

Practice 3 Results