Vettel on top as Hamilton splits Ferraris before qualifying

Full FP3 results ahead of the Italian Grand Prix

Sebastian Vettel has maintained his spot at the top for Ferrari in the final practice session at Monza but Lewis Hamilton has given Mercedes timely hope of a fightback ahead of qualifying for the Italian Grand Prix.

With Ferrari’s engine grades making it the strong favourite at its home race, Vettel duly laid down the marker to beat with a 1m 20.509s for his best effort during his qualifying simulation heading up a provisional 1-2 with teammate Kimi Raikkonen slotting into second just under two-tenths back.

But Hamilton battled back during his single lap runs in FP3 to take second place, 0.081s behind his Formula 1 world title rival, to set up an enticing qualifying at Monza.

Hamilton’s Mercedes teammate Valtteri Bottas wasn’t able to match the pace of his fellow front-runners but did enough to take fourth place albeit over half a second back from Vettel and Hamilton.

That gave Red Bull’s Max Verstappen a sniff of the top four taking fifth place less than two-tenths off Bottas and with a comfortable gap to the best of the F1 midfield runners Kevin Magnussen for Haas who edged Force India’s Esteban Ocon by just 0.044s.

Daniel Ricciardo slotted into eighth in FP3, having not opted for a qualifying run with his hefty grid penalties set to force him to the back of the grid in Italy, with Charles Leclerc taking ninth for Alfa Romeo Sauber.

Romain Grosjean rounded out the top ten despite having just one qualifying simulation lap for Haas after being hampered by traffic with Force India’s Sergio Perez ahead of Toro Rosso’s Pierre Gasly.

Carlos Sainz Jr leads the Renault charge in P13 with team-mate Nico Hulkenberg set for a back row start with his numerous grid penalties, while Sergey Sirotkin edged the Williams battle ahead of Lance Stroll.

McLaren remains the slowest team on the grid in Italy with Fernando Alonso 16^th and Stoffel Vandoorne 17^th with Marcus Ericsson, back after his heavy FP2 crash, forced to see his practice cut short by a technical issue.