Nico Rosberg put Mercedes on top in the first practice session at Monza as the team were among few to run the super-soft tyres in the first session.
The Ferrari drivers were a second in arrears as the home favourites set their best times on the slower soft compound tyres. Kimi Raikkonen was the quicker of the pair while Sebastian Vettel found he couldn’t get a quick second lap from the rubber late in the session.
The next two drivers both used the super-soft tyres to set their best times: Sergio Perez in the Force India (test driver Alfonso Celis drove theteam’s othercar) and Romain Grosjean for Haas. The second Haas also appeared in the top ten, Esteban Gutierrez three-tenths down on his team mate.
The two VF-16s were separated by Valtteri Bottas and Max Verstappen, the latter testing the Halo device on his Red Bull. His team mate completed the top ten.
A largely uneventful session ended with Fernando Alonso limping back to the pits in his McLaren after an apparent technical problem.
First practice visual gaps
Nico Rosberg – 1’22.959
+0.203 Lewis Hamilton – 1’23.162
+1.088 Kimi Raikkonen – 1’24.047
+1.348 Sebastian Vettel – 1’24.307
+1.691 Sergio Perez – 1’24.650
+1.804 Romain Grosjean – 1’24.763
+1.826 Valtteri Bottas – 1’24.785
+2.023 Max Verstappen – 1’24.982
+2.154 Esteban Gutierrez – 1’25.113
+2.161 Daniel Ricciardo – 1’25.120
+2.408 Alfonso Celis – 1’25.367
+2.548 Fernando Alonso – 1’25.507
+2.881 Felipe Massa – 1’25.840
+2.894 Marcus Ericsson – 1’25.853
+3.014 Carlos Sainz Jnr – 1’25.973
+3.115 Daniil Kvyat – 1’26.074
+3.432 Esteban Ocon – 1’26.391
+3.480 Felipe Nasr – 1’26.439
+3.803 Pascal Wehrlein – 1’26.762
+3.852 Jolyon Palmer – 1’26.811
+3.997 Kevin Magnussen – 1’26.956
Drivers more then ten seconds off the pace omitted.
evered7 (@evered7)
2nd September 2016, 11:18
Didn’t Rosberg set the 1:22 lap on softs on the return after the SS runs?
ColdFly F1 (@)
2nd September 2016, 11:22
@evered7
evered7 (@evered7)
2nd September 2016, 11:43
@coldfly I need a rest :-) This was in relation to the tweet that Pirelli posted saying how the times are faster than last year’s pole but only softs were used last year.
BasCB (@bascb)
2nd September 2016, 12:59
Don’t feel too bad about it @evered7, it got me confused a bit too, before I got that both of them had done runs on the SSofts, but their quickest times were set on the softs, and therefore offer a good comparison to last year’s times.
Kie
2nd September 2016, 11:49
Blimey, that Renault really is slow :(
BrawnGP (@brawngp)
2nd September 2016, 11:51
Its so hot here!
Biggsy
2nd September 2016, 12:09
@keithcollantine
Hey Keith, totally offtopc, but just had to say this. It’s been irritating me since the new site was launched.
In order to prevent those annoying dropdown menus from pushing the content up and down all the time, especially while the page is loading, you just need to add two lines of code.
To the selector “.main-navigation ul li ul” just add “position: absolute; z-index: 1;”
Should look like this:
.main-navigation ul li ul {
position: absolute;
z-index: 1;
}
That’s that. I’m sure many will be thankful. :)
trublu (@trublu)
2nd September 2016, 14:07
Glad to see I’m not the only ocd one here. That nav bar has been driving me crazy!
Jeanrien (@jeanrien)
2nd September 2016, 14:37
@Biggsy I think there is a page to report such problems :
https://www.racefans.net/contact/reporting-technical-problem/
I think the drop menus are making navigation animated for a lot of us, but at least the quality of the content hasn’t drop…
Uncle Ben (@uncleben)
2nd September 2016, 12:20
What were the top speeds? Did anyone hit 380 kph yet?
Akshat
2nd September 2016, 17:46
No and I doubt they will.
Robbie (@robbie)
2nd September 2016, 13:02
So you see, as far as Max is concerned, he has a halo over his head.