The rain really hit hard in Italy on Saturday, with only 16 minutes of running for final practice in the morning, and a heavily delayed qualifying after an initial run ended with Grosjean in the wall. After just a handful of tentative laps, the Haas crashed which brought out the red flags, followed by a two and a half hour delay.

When things had cleared up somewhat, drivers resumed running, wet tyres bolted on their cars, and the next two qualifying sessions were without major incident. Palmer dropped out in Q1, whilst Sergio Pérez missed the cut for Q3 by the smallest of margins.

Into the top ten shoot out, and it was Lewis Hamilton on pole again, with Ferrari dropping back to seventh and eighth. Red Bull performed well to finish second and third, but both drivers have penalties to take, which promotes the Williams of Lance Stroll up onto the front row of the grid, followed by an equally impressive Esteban Ocon.

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First practice in Italy was relatively quiet. The Mercedes pair were comfortably fastest, with a full second over Ferrari who were next in line. The track was quite slippery and drivers were pushing to find the limits, and that only got worse as the expected rain came down with just 15 minutes of the session left to go.

In the afternoon, Bottas led the way from Hamilton – a switch from the morning session – but Ferrari had significantly closed the gap. All four cars were within half a second of each other. Both McLarens were also in the top ten, although Fernando Alonso did have momentary power loss that seemed to sort itself out.

Not so for Carlos Sainz, who endured a spin during FP1 and then an engine failure that halted his running in FP2. Kvyat was also told to stop towards the end of the session. Kevin Magnussen also stopped during FP2 with suspension trouble, picked up after running heavily over the kerbs around the tricky Monza track.

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