Bottas tops second practice for Italian GP

F1 Grand Prix, GP Italy, Autodromo Nazionale di Monza

The second free practice session of the Italian GP weekend ended with Valtteri Bottas on top of the timesheet. The fastest man of the morning, Lewis Hamilton was less than a tenth slower. Sebastian Vettel headed the Ferrari duo in third and fourth.

As has become somewhat traditional, Ferrari were much closer in FP2 than they were in the morning session. In fact, they were the only ones get to within a second of the Mercedes, as Verstappen was 5th fastest but already 1.003s slower than Bottas.

Ricciardo was 6th fastest, somewhat surprisingly followed by McLaren's Stoffel Vandoorne and Fernando Alonso. Both of them enjoyed troublefree sessions and must be boosted by the performance displayed at the high speed Autodromo di Monza. Still, it only counts on Sunday.

Esteban Ocon was 9th fastest for Force India while Felipe Massa was 10th, just like this morning.

Overall, it was a reasonably straightforward session. Carlos Sainz did however seem to suffer an engine failure that could add more penalty points to the 10 he will serve for taking on a new, 5th MGU-H this weekend. Daniel Ricciardo similarly had to stop his car near the end of the session. He too, just like Max Verstappen, is facing grid penalties for taking a new MGU-H from Renault.