Hamilton leads first Monza practice

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F1 Grand Prix, GP Italy, Autodromo Nazionale di Monzait

Lewis Hamilton kicked off the Italian Grand Prix weekend on top in a generally trouble free first practice session at Monza. Jenson Button was second fastest with the second Mercedes of Nico Rosberg third.

As ever, the first half hour proved to be busy on track with teams getting to use an additional set of tyres during this period to encourage running. In these early stages, most team mates were closely matched, with the Mercedes duo on top, 0.007s apart from each other.

In this part, Daniel Juncadella was given the chance to run the Force India for 10 laps before the team began switching the car installations back to the configuration of Sergio Perez. The latter completed the rest of the session, adding another 13 laps in the car during the last half hour of the session.

For Lotus, Charles Pic completed the entire session in place of Pastor Maldonado while Giedo van der Garde ran 19 laps in Adrian Sutil's Sauber C33.

After a quiet moment, teams stuck with the harder tyre to continue to test different car set-ups, mostly altering rear wings to evaluate lower or higher downforce regulations. Lewis Hamilton though continued to be fastest, steadily improving his time t a 1:26.187. Nico Rosberg did not appear to chase similar times, allowing Jenson Button to become second fastest in this session.

Results

Pos.No.DriverTeamTimeGapLaps
144Lewis HamiltonMercedes1:26.18725
222Jenson ButtonMcLaren-Mercedes1:26.8100.62327
36Nico RosbergMercedes1:26.9950.80826
414Fernando AlonsoFerrari1:27.1690.98223
520Kevin MagnussenMcLaren-Mercedes1:27.2281.04130
61Sebastian VettelRed Bull Racing-Renault1:27.2711.08427
77Kimi RäikkönenFerrari1:27.4931.30627
811Sergio PerezForce India-Mercedes1:27.6871.50013
926Daniil KvyatStr-Renault1:27.7411.55433
1027Nico HulkenbergForce India-Mercedes1:28.1121.92523
1121Esteban GutierrezSauber-Ferrari1:28.1141.92721
1277Valtteri BottasWilliams-Mercedes1:28.1481.96120
1319Felipe MassaWilliams-Mercedes1:28.1501.96321
1425Jean-Eric VergneStr-Renault1:28.3002.11330
1536Giedo van der GardeSauber-Ferrari1:28.4292.24219
163Daniel RicciardoRed Bull Racing-Renault1:28.4872.30012
1734Daniel JuncadellaForce India-Mercedes1:29.1923.00510
1813Pastor MaldonadoLotus-Renault1:29.5123.32524
194Max ChiltonMarussia-Ferrari1:30.0173.83025
2017Jules BianchiMarussia-Ferrari1:30.0813.89427
2130Charles PicLotus-Renault1:30.1253.93823
2245Roberto MerhiCaterham-Renault1:30.7044.51710
239Marcus EricssonCaterham-Renault1:30.9484.76116