What we learned from Friday practice at the 2026 F1 Italian GP

Optimism was in short supply on the approach to this year's Italian Grand Prix at Monza. For a while, most of the warnings about Formula 1's new powertrain regulations had hinged around the expected performance of the cars at the Temple of Speed, with the 'alpha-build' 2026 cars requiring heavy doses of lift-and-coast into the Variante del Rettifilo and the complete neutering of everything that made Monza thrilling as a spectacle.

On the basis of practice, it hasn't been anything as bad as that. The cars are slower down the straights, granted, and George Russell's chart-topping lap from FP2 was 2.7 seconds slower than Lando Norris' equivalent lap from last year - pretty much in line with what we've seen all season versus the 2025 times. But the superclipping hasn't been outrageous, not by a long shot; on his best lap, Russell topped out at 336km/h on the main straight, and then lost 11km/h as the motor began to charge against itself before the braking zone. 

Granted, that's not ideal - we'd rather see the car continue to accelerate before the driver hits the brakes. But when you compare that to his equivalent qualifying run in China, hitting 333km/h along the long back straight before dropping down to a low of 306km/h before braking, the difference is night and day. Yes, the back straight at Shanghai is longer, but there's also far more opportunities to scavenge energy around the lap before that. 

Don't mistake this for unfounded positivity: the situation is still not anywhere near what it could and should be, but nor is it anywhere near as forlorn as the energy situation seen at the start of the year. That said, we've not seen the engine wicks fully turned up yet - so there's still scope for this to go either way.

In any case, Ferrari went into the weekend hoping that its upgraded engine would translate into a third grand prix victory of the year. A 1-2 at the top of the timing charts in FP1 probably got the tifosi licking its lips at the prospect of a home win for the Prancing Horse, but Russell's FP2 effort put him just over a tenth clear of Charles Leclerc during the soft-tyre runs.

 It was a familiar situation for Ferrari, in that the SF-26 was rather handy in the corners around the lap, but was lacking a bit of top-end speed along the straights. Is it keeping its new engine under wraps, or is there still enough deficit to the Mercedes and Red Bull-Ford runners to keep the Ferrari team from achieving its wildest dreams? I suspect qualifying will provide the true answer here.

"It's still a long way until Sunday," Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur remarked. "It looks like for the race pace you have different options in terms of energy deployment. For sure you will have opportunities also to overtake. It's better if we are not in pole, but if we are in pole tomorrow, I would prefer a mega boring [race]!"

Hamilton wants the prestige of winning in Italy for Ferrari

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"You have to keep in mind the performance in the straight line. It's the drag, it's the weight of the car, it's everything. It's not just the engine. We did a step for sure and we didn't bring ADUO2 for nothing. But I think we still have a decent gap."

In terms of race performance, most would probably fathom a guess that Monza will provide a one-stopper. The tyres can often hold up pretty well, as the circuit doesn't put too much lateral force through the rubber and the straights help to keep the temperatures within the ideal window as the tyres cool down a little. But if the weekend weather remains hot, and track temperatures rose beyond 53C over Friday, then this could start to push a few teams further down the road of a two-stop plan on Sunday. 

What remains to be seen is the style of racing we'll get; many predicted the yo-yos to be shaken out of the toy box once again, but Alpine's Franco Colapinto suggested that "it wasn't so easy to overtake, being around other cars was not easy". You'd expect the drivers to be a lot more reticent to use the boost button, as chugging the entire battery's worth of energy for one overtaking move isn't a particularly sensible idea given the paucity of recharging spots. It might be a more tactical encounter, then, if Colapinto's suggestions prove true.

We can at least attempt to predict the competitive order on Sunday, employing our usual analysis of the long-run times across the stint. 

Average FP2 long runs

The first thing to note is that McLaren looks a bit out of sorts on this basis, and Norris stated that the car is not performing as expected: "In the corners we expected to be good at, we're bad, and the corners we expected to be bad at, we're not so bad at, but we're still off."

McLaren chose to do something different in FP2, by running Norris up close with Oscar Piastri to get an idea of the tow effect around the Monza circuit, along with the energy modes, so it's difficult to peg Norris' foray on the hard tyres as a genuine attempt at a long-run simulation. 

Norris and Piastri ran together on track in FP2

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Both Kimi Antonelli and Liam Lawson did massive stints over the course of FP2, getting their soft-tyre runs in early before switching to the different compounds available.

Lawson actually did two race-style simulations, logging a stint on the softs while everyone else was doing qualifying lap, before switching to the hard tyre - which ultimately proved quicker overall than Max Verstappen's equivalent stint on mediums. Antonelli's 18-lap run on the hards is very much a precursor to his race on Sunday; with a series of grid penalties for taking new engine components pending, one imagines he'll start on the hards and go deep into the race. 

Race pace-wise, Red Bull didn't look too far off (despite the shorter stint, and that Antonelli spent a fair chunk of his stint stuck behind Verstappen) and Ferrari was in the ball-park with its longer runs on softs. It is likely that this was to assess whether a soft-hard strategy was viable, and other teams appeared to follow suit to determine if the C5 could last for long enough.

In terms of one-lap pace, however, Red Bull was a step behind the other "Big Four" teams - and technical director Pierre Wache surmised that the team was once more struggling with shifts in balance. Verstappen reported "jumping" at the front of the car, theorising that a kerb strike had unsettled the front end of the car. 

The midfield was as expected, albeit with Williams finding a respectable lick of long-run pace after a few dismal rounds. The Grove team has been consistently strong at Monza for a number of years, its lower-downforce cars helpfully not encumbered by very much drag, and it seemed to outpace Audi across a soft-tyre stint of similar length. That said, Audi's running in FP2 was halved when Gabriel Bortoleto pitted with an apparent misfire, thus putting the onus of data-gathering on Nico Hulkenberg's shoulders.

Racing Bulls headed this midfield order and, on one-lap pace, should aim to get both cars into Q3 once more this season. The problem is that Alpine will be knocking on the door and, on the evidence of FP2, Ollie Bearman might fancy his chances too.

Lindblad was quicker than the Red Bulls in his qualifying simulations

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Bearman's longer stint was hard to read given a couple of slow laps, thus we've plumped for Ocon's more consistent run on the soft, but the Briton's pace in FP2 suggested that he could be in with a shout of points if the new Ferrari power unit can deliver the goods.

Haas is running with a number of updates for Monza, introducing a new floor and sidepods to arrest its slide into the lower midfield, and Bearman carried that combination to eighth on the final timing charts. His cause was helped by Red Bull's balance struggles, and Lawson doing his soft-tyre run well out of sequence with anyone else, but Haas might have some reason to be optimistic in Italy.

Aston Martin seemed to struggle overall; despite Honda's improvements in Zandvoort, the engine is still down on power versus its fellow manufacturers and this was evident around its Monza runs. Fernando Alonso dug out some reasonable pace to move past both Cadillacs on the time sheets, but Lance Stroll's long-run on the softs was much slower than Valtteri Bottas' effort on the same compound. 

Qualifying could change significantly if teams opt to play games with the tow; it's risky, as getting it wrong could end up costing a lot of time and potentially leave a driver stranded well down the order. There's opportunities to overtake, however, especially if the yo-yos do indeed end up coming out - and don't forget to watch for a Mercedes carving its way through the order...

Antonelli has a grid penalty to overcome in his home grand prix

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