McLaren struggle but regain momentum, Ferrari and Sainz rise as challengers

Within the first ten minutes Max Verstappen, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri were occupying the top spots. However, the session drew to a halt when Andrea Kimi Antonelli lost the rear of his Mercedes W16, beaching it on the outside of Lesmo 2 and bringing out the red flag.

When the session restarted around the 35 minute mark, Carlos Sainz took the top spot bumping Verstappen, Norris and Piastri down a place, with Alexander Albon then taking P3.

As McLaren experienced handling issues in the MCL39, Norris brought down Sainz' time by 7 tenths, however, the Spaniard on his second run closed the gap to around 4 tenths. Nico Hulkenberg closed the gap to Norris further and took P2 ahead of Sainz, before Albon put Willliams' name back in the P2 spot.

Lewis Hamilton confirmed his Ferrari's pace beating Norri's time in the first 2 sectors, but missing out by under two tenths in Sector 3. Piastri had some work to do, with the Australian's soft tyre run placing him in P6 just under half a second adrift off his teammate's time.

Verstappen demoted Albon, but was still behind Hamilton. Sainz edged closer to Norris with a time just under a tenth off the British driver's. Piastri, on the same set of softs then slotted in P3, marginally ahead of Hamilton and Verstappen. Leclerc then went quicker than Sainz, but not enough to beat Norris who remained a-top his rivals.