Hamilton leads first Monza practice

F1 Grand Prix, GP Italy, Autodromo Nazionale di Monza

Lewis Hamilton kicked off the Italian Grand Prix weekend on top in a generally trouble free first practice session at Monza. Jenson Button was second fastest with the second Mercedes of Nico Rosberg third.

As ever, the first half hour proved to be busy on track with teams getting to use an additional set of tyres during this period to encourage running. In these early stages, most team mates were closely matched, with the Mercedes duo on top, 0.007s apart from each other.

In this part, Daniel Juncadella was given the chance to run the Force India for 10 laps before the team began switching the car installations back to the configuration of Sergio Perez. The latter completed the rest of the session, adding another 13 laps in the car during the last half hour of the session.

For Lotus, Charles Pic completed the entire session in place of Pastor Maldonado while Giedo van der Garde ran 19 laps in Adrian Sutil's Sauber C33.

After a quiet moment, teams stuck with the harder tyre to continue to test different car set-ups, mostly altering rear wings to evaluate lower or higher downforce regulations. Lewis Hamilton though continued to be fastest, steadily improving his time t a 1:26.187. Nico Rosberg did not appear to chase similar times, allowing Jenson Button to become second fastest in this session.