At Williams, appendicitis forced Albon to the sidelines and one-time Formula E champion de Vries in his place for the rest of the Italian GP. De Vries, who drove for Aston Martin in FP1 in place of Sebastian Vettel, took to the Monza circuit ahead of his race debut on Sunday with 36 minutes remaining in the hour-long session and promptly finished 18th on medium tyres. A slow start to the final Monza weekend practice meant just six drivers had recorded lap times after the first 10 minutes of running. Red Bull’s Sergio Perez set the early benchmark with a 1m23.448s on the medium tyre. He then improved to 1m22.611s and 1m22.148s, with Alfa Romeo’s Valtteri Bottas around two seconds back in second after an initial run on soft rubber. Perez’s Red Bull team-mate Verstappen was forced to abort his first flying lap on medium tires just 10 minutes into the session when he encountered slow traffic in the form of Mercedes’ George Russell. Several drivers would encounter slow traffic on their push laps, with Bottas almost finishing behind the Ferrari of a touring Carlos Sainz at Turn 1 20 minutes into the race. Bottas was forced to run through the first chicane having blown his soft tires trying to avoid Perez, with the stewards putting the incident under investigation before opting to recall the Spaniard after FP3. Sainz’s session was further complicated when he was told to pit soon after with a suspected fuel system problem, although he was able to get back on track with around half an hour to go. After his initial aggressive lap time was hampered by Russell, Verstappen shot to the top of the class with a 1m21.872s on medium tires just under 20 minutes into the session as Leclerc’s Ferrari moved up to second in the same group. Verstappen’s position remained intact when Sainz moved up to second on the soft rubber with 15 minutes remaining before the Red Bull driver clocked 1m21.252s in his qualifying simulation on the red-wall tyre. This would be the best lap of the weekend so far in qualifying, with Leclerc second to Perez. Leclerc clocked his first flying lap on the softs towards the end of FP3, getting the best of the bunch for his second attempt. Sainz finished the session fourth ahead of Fernando Alonso’s Alpine and McLaren’s Lando Norris. Russell was the fastest of the Mercedes drivers in seventh from AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda and Alpine’s Esteban Ocon, who joins the list of nine facing grid penalties for Sunday’s race. Lewis Hamilton completed the top 10 in the sister Mercedes ahead of Alfa Romeo’s Zhou Guanyu, Pierre Gasly (AlphaTauri) and Williams duo Nicholas Latifi and de Vries. De Vries improved to 1m22.869s, although he suffered an off-track moment coming out of the first Lesmo with around half an hour of the session still to run. McLaren’s Daniel Ricciardo headed by Bottas, Aston Martin’s Sebastian Vettel, Haas duo Kevin Magnussen and Mick Schumacher – who was kept in his garage until the last 10 minutes by a clutch problem – and Lance Stroll in the second Aston .
