{"id":402556,"date":"2025-09-06T11:49:14","date_gmt":"2025-09-06T11:49:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/402556\/"},"modified":"2025-09-06T11:49:14","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T11:49:14","slug":"norris-shades-leclerc-and-piastri-in-tight-final-practice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/402556\/","title":{"rendered":"Norris shades Leclerc and Piastri in tight final practice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lando Norris<\/a> has topped third practice at F1’s Italian GP, heading Ferrari<\/a> hero Charles Leclerc<\/a> and team-mate Oscar Piastri<\/a> ahead of a pivotal qualifying session at Monza.<\/p>\n

Norris, who is looking to start chipping away at Piastri’s 34-point championship leader, bested his team-mate by less than two tenths at Monza’s iconic Temple of Speed, with a late effort from Leclerc just 0.021s shy of the Briton.<\/p>\n

Red Bull’s Yuki Tsunoda<\/a> led the early running on hard tyres as all three Pirelli compounds saw action across a variety of run plans.<\/p>\n

After 25 minutes Verstappen dipped below the 1m20 barrier with a 1m19.688s on softs, the first man to go faster than Norris’ leading FP2 time on Friday.<\/p>\n

It took until the final 20 minutes for pre-event favourite McLaren<\/a> to start showing its hand, with Norris vaulting to the top of the table courtesy of a 1m19.331s.<\/p>\n

That was a handy quarter of a second faster than championship leading team-mate Piastri, who set a 1m19.578s lap, closely followed by Racing Bulls man Isack Hadjar<\/a> after another promising showing for the French junior.<\/p>\n

Piastri found more time on his second soft-tyre run with a 1m19.496s to reduce the deficit to Norris to 0.167s, with the McLaren pair once again emerging as the favourites for pole later on Saturday.<\/p>\n

\"Charles <\/p>\n

Charles Leclerc, Ferrari<\/p>\n

Photo by: Rudy Carezzevoli \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

But as was the case in 2024, Ferrari has emerged as a threat as its home race as Leclerc overcame several oversteer scares to take second away from Piastri at the end, his 1m19.35s lap just 0.021s shy of Norris.<\/p>\n

Returning to the scene of Red Bull’s worst performances of 2024, reigning world champion Max Verstappen<\/a> was an encouraging fourth in the RB21 just 0.002s off Piastri.<\/p>\n

The Dutchman’s lap further underlined team advisor Helmut Marko’s optimism that the squad can actually be in the mix with the McLarens this weekend.<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

Fifth-placed Mercedes<\/a> driver George Russell<\/a> wasn’t far back either, shipping just two tenths to Norris, ahead of what is shaping up to be a qualifying session decided by minor details.<\/p>\n

Sauber<\/a> was the surprise package of FP3 with rookie Gabriel Bortoleto<\/a> taking sixth ahead of the second Ferrari of Lewis Hamilton<\/a>, with Racing Bulls man Hadjar snatching eighth.<\/p>\n

Mercedes rookie Andrea Kimi Antonelli<\/a> recovered from his early FP2 exit with a tweaked run plan to cover all his bases, and the Italian’s soft-tyre run left him ninth ahead of Williams<\/a> driver Alex Albon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Qualifying for the 2025 Italian Grand Prix follows at 16:00 local time.<\/p>\n

F1 Italian GP – FP3 results<\/p>\n

In this article<\/p>\n

Be the first to know and subscribe for real-time news email updates on these topics<\/p>\n

Subscribe to news alerts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lando Norris has topped third practice at F1’s Italian GP, heading Ferrari hero Charles Leclerc and team-mate Oscar…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":402557,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4103],"tags":[138804,4199,138803,707,4200,137088,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-402556","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-autodromo-nazionale-monza","9":"tag-f1","10":"tag-f1-italian-gp-norris-shades-leclerc-and-piastri-in-tight-final-practice","11":"tag-formula-1","12":"tag-formula1","13":"tag-italian-gp","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115157202780408281","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402556\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}