As the session went on, Verstappen remained faster than anybody – apart from a very brief stint with Alonso at the top – and the gap was often more than a second.

On the whole, however, the opening stages had a slow tempo as Verstappen’s main rivals initially struggled for pace.

Perez, Leclerc and Russell were around two seconds off the championship leader after 25 minutes, Hamilton was in the bottom half of the timesheet, as was Sainz whose session was interrupted early on with a floor change to his car.

Instead, it was Tsunoda on the softs, Alonso on the hards and Ocon on the mediums that were closest to Verstappen – who had improved to a 1min 22.853sec by this point – just before halfway.

Then more drivers started to fit on the soft tyre and this paid dividends as Leclerc went fastest with a 1min 22.410sec, while Russell put himself in third.

It looked like that would be short-lived for Leclerc, because Verstappen also put on the softs and went purple in the first two sectors for his opening lap on that compound.

But then he was massively held up by Norris in the final sector, which caused Verstappen to cross the line fourth-tenths off Leclerc.

“Unbelievable,” reacted a frustrated Verstappen over team radio.

Being impeded cost him as Sainz managed to get his session on-track and go second with 15 minutes to go.

Verstappen then tumbled to fifth because Mercedes made it a three-four and those leading lap times would not be beaten for the remainder of the session.

Instead, the biggest incident in the final 10 minutes came between Russell and Sainz, as the Ferrari driver was caught going very slowly at turn 5.

Russell reacted over team radio saying: “Oh my God. Almost just crashed into the back of Sainz there. He just parked on the exit of Turn 5.”

Ocon, Alonso, Yuki Tsunoda, Valtteri Bottas and Daniel Ricciardo all then rounded up the top 10 while overall, it was a frustrating session for Perez who was eventually 14th after being unable to use DRS.

FP1 CLASSIFICATION

It's Charles Leclerc on top in the first session#ItalianGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/1eyIF18fCp

— Formula 1 (@F1) September 9, 2022

2022 Italian Grand Prix FP2 report

The session began with a frantic 15 minutes where Verstappen and Leclerc both completed six laps, while Sebastian Vettel had done the most with 10.

After that period, Verstappen was the fastest driver with a 1min 22.303sec lap, which was just 0.004sec quicker than Leclerc.

Sainz was closely behind in third, while Perez was eight-tenths off his team-mate in fourth.

All four drivers had started on the medium rubber, which was the predominant choice of tyre in the opening stages.

The 20 minute mark then saw Haas test the power of the tow on an empty Monza circuit.

Kevin Magnussen followed Mick Schumacher closely with his advantage on the straight paying dividends, as the Danish driver recorded a 1min 23.871sec lap, seven-tenths faster than his team-mate.

Ten minutes later, Schumacher caused a red flag as he stopped on the right hand side of the track heading into Turn 6.

The Haas driver felt his engine starting to cut out upon the exit of Turn 5, before the session restarted again with 25 minutes left on the clock.

Shortly before Schumacher’s retirement, Norris had managed to split the Ferrari cars with a 1min 22.338sec lap, while Hamilton, Alonso and Albon all got in front of Perez.

Upon the restart, it didn’t take long until the timesheet saw a new leader with Sainz recording a 1min 21.664sec effort after coming out on the softs.

From then on, the order remained relatively unchanged as drivers then went through their different testing programmes with the front-runners starting to set mid 1min 20sec laps.

FP2 CLASSIFICATION

Carlos Sainz tops the charts in FP2#ItalianGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/lzkNh14OIt

— Formula 1 (@F1) September 9, 2022