F1 News: Hamilton leads Ferrari 1-2 in Practice 1 for Italian GP

With their engines turned up to excite the Italian crowd and sell more race day tickets, Ferrari drivers Lewis Hamilton (pictured) and Charles Leclerc ran 1-2 in opening practice for the 2025 Italian GP at Monza.

–by Mark Cipolloni–

Hamilton turned a lap of 1m20.117s to top his teammate Lelcerc by 0.169s.

Carlos Sainz Jr. was third quick for Williams, 0.533s behind Hamilton.

Max Verstappen in the Red Bull RB21 Honda was 4th0.575s behind Hamilton. However, while the Ferrari engine was turned up, Verstappen’s Honda was turned down.

Despite an off or two, Kimi Antonelli rounded out the top-5 for Mercedes, 0.823s behind Hamilton’s turned up Ferrari.

The session ended under red flag when George Russell stopped his Mercedes on track. Russell did jump out of the car in the end, so Mercedes will now have to await recovering that car before working out what happened – unless the data already indicates something. At least it happened now, so if a power unit or gearbox needs to be changed, he can do so with parts from his pool with no penalties taken.

McLaren had a quiet opening – Norris not nailing his first laps on the soft, hence why he is down the order. We’ll find out later when Piastri gets into the car just how genuine that pace was, or if McLaren were data gathering in that session.

The one big takeaway from that session, bar Ferrari, though, is that Williams looks to have very, very good pace here.

2025 Italian GP Practice 1 Results