F1 Italian GP Live Commentary and Updates - FP1 & FP2
Friday's action from the 14th round of the 2023 Formula 1 season
Live AppleTV Race Audio
Max Verstappen arrives at Monza with the chance to become the first driver in F1 history to win 10 grands prix in succession.
Sergio Perez is second in the standings but sits 138 points behind his Red Bull ream-mate.
But it is the midfield battle to be best-of-the-rest where the excitement has been found this season, with the pecking order fluctuating between Mercedes, Aston Martin, Ferrari and McLaren race-by-race.
Mercedes currently leads the best-of-the-rest battle by 40 points from Aston Martin.
FP1 begins on Friday at 12:30pm BST with FP2 following at 4:00pm BST.
Into the final 15 minutes of the session and Lawson pops up to 13th on the times, just over half a second off the pace of his team-mate Tsunoda in ninth.
The drivers are starting to push to find the limits now, as Piastri runs on at the first corner. Meanwhile Russell has moved up to fifth place, half a second off Verstappen.
Zhou is the next to complain about bottoming, calling it "undrivable" with his Alfa Romeo. Bottas says the same thing but about the rear-end feel of his car. Not a good start for the Sauber-run squad.
Sainz disrupts the Red Bull dominance again by slotting into second with a 1m22.703s, while team-mate Leclerc's car is up on the jacks in the garage for a suspension change.
Bottas is also back out on track after his earlier issue, but he has complained about something wrong with the rear of his car through medium and high speed corners.
Given Sargeant's qualifying and race crashes at Zandvoort, this feels like quite an important race weekend for the young American. The Williams car is fancied to go well at Monza, like last year, so his first points of year should be the target.
The Williams pair emerge from the pits for the first time this session, both on softs, and are joined by Zhou after his earlier anti-stall and clutch hiccups.
Birthday boy Sainz, on hards, goes top with a 1m23.241s. Lap times are not hugely relevant at this stage of the weekend as everyone beds into their run plans.
Both Alfa Romeos are stuck in the garage with their technical issue, and still no sign of either Williams driver yet, but everyone else has been out on the track early.
Zhou has come to a halt at the end of the pitlane and cannot get going so that triggers the Alfa Romeo mechanics into a sprint to rescue the Chinese driver. It looks like a similar issue also hit Bottas coming out of the pits.
McLaren is also running a special tribute, albeit much more restrained compared to its Italian contemporaries. On Saturday it is 60 years to the day since McLaren was founded so to celebrate it has special branding on the cars.
There is also a couple of special liveries on show this weekend: Ferrari is running the stylings used by its triumphant Le Mans 24 Hours winner and Alfa Romeo has a special, er, Alfa Romeo livery. But trust me, it is a looker.
Switching focus to practice, just the one FP1 driver in for this weekend, as Drugovich slides into Stroll's Aston Martin for the session. And Lawson continues as stand-in for the injured Ricciardo at AlphaTauri.
While at Ferrari, team boss Fred Vasseur has cleared up confusion over its senior management structure and that Enrico Cardile is its official technical director.
Sticking on Verstappen, he has also provided insight into working with a new performance engineer for 2023 who has become an unsung hero in his recent run.
Meanwhile Verstappen has the chance to make F1 history this weekend as he aims for 10 consecutive wins. In true Verstappen style he said he was unfussed by the record, seeing it as just another opportunity to win a race. We'll see about that.
Firstly, some F1 driver market news - but probably the least surprising update of the year - Hamilton and Russell will remain Mercedes F1 drivers until at least the end of 2025.
Hello one and all! How are we? It is nearly time for opening practice for the Italian GP, but before that let's run through the biggest talking points coming into the weekend.
