Lewis Hamilton continued to dominate the Italian Grand Prix weekend to claim yet another top finish in what is the second and final F1 practice session.

Max Verstappen has very evidently made a huge leap in performance, but just not enough to fend off the Mercedes duo. Hence, Mercedes could well stay ahead, going into the sprint as well.

Meanwhile, heartbreak for Carlos Sainz, as the Spaniard suffered a crash for the second time in two race weekends. Charles Leclerc, who looked fine through most parts of the session, had a call from his race engineer to return to the pits.

How the F1 session unfolded

Schumacher was the first driver to post a lap time, which ended up being 1:27:374, just 0.089s quicker than his teammate. Soon, Giovinazzi split the two Haas drivers after posting his lap time on medium tires. Perez arrived with a 1:24:870 to go fastest.

Considering the fastest lap time in qualifying was 1:19:555, the lap times in FP2 were obvious that the drivers were prepping up for the sprint, running with a significant amount of fuel on board. Also, most of the drivers had their respective runs on either soft or medium tires.

Verstappen opted to choose soft and consequently secured the provisional fastest lap of the session; 1:23:754, almost 0.5s ahead of his teammate. Bottas, on the other hand, opted to run with hard tires; the Finn has a huge task of fighting through the field on Sunday.

Then popped out the red flags.

Sainz crashes out

Ferrari wouldn’t have wanted this, especially from Sainz. The Spaniard had a similar moment in North Holland. Hence, a crash is the last thing Sainz would have needed coming into Monza.

Sainz was on his flying lap when he lost the rear going into the high-speed turn 9. He further came into contact with the halo, causing a significant impact on his head, but thankfully, he is safe. His car? Not so much.

Well, the damage has been done, and the only good news is that the car looked safe around the rear. The front though suffered a serious blow, including terminal front-left suspension damage.

The session resumes post-Sainz incident

With 21 minutes left on the clock, the steward green-flagged the session, as the drivers rushed onto the track to continue with their runs. And as expected, the lap times began ramping up, with the Alfa Romeo duo provisionally holding onto P4 and P5.

Then arrived Hamilton’s fastest lap time of 1:23:246, which ended up just over 0.2s ahead of Bottas and 0.5s ahead of Verstappen.

Overall, there end the practice runs and the focus is all on the soon-to-begin Sprint qualifying. With Bottas leading Hamilton and Verstappen, which of the trio is going to claim the pole position for Sunday’s main race? Well, we’ll know in time.

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