FP3 Results 2026 Italian GP: Russell Fastest at Monza

George Russell went fastest in final practice at Monza, and by more than two tenths, which on a track this fast and this short is the sort of gap that makes a session look like a foregone conclusion. It isn’t. Because the man closest to him on the timesheet, Lewis Hamilton, is Ferrari’s problem to worry about, while the man who actually threatens Russell’s championship position starts Sunday’s race from the back of the grid regardless of what happens in qualifying.

Kimi Antonelli was fourth in FP3, comfortably inside the group fighting for the places behind Russell, but a power unit change means he’s taking a grid penalty and starting the Italian Grand Prix from the back. That ought to be the marquee story of the weekend given Antonelli leads the championship by 59 points, yet somehow it barely dents the mood at Mercedes. If anything, it’s freed the team up to do something team orders purists will hate: use Antonelli’s qualifying lap purely to tow Russell towards pole.

Russell’s Buffer Isn’t as Comfortable as It Looks

On paper, Russell’s advantage over the chasing pack looks handy. In reality, the gap from second to fifth was covered by only a couple of tenths, with Max Verstappen third and Lando Norris fifth squeezed into that tiny window alongside Hamilton and Antonelli. Qualifying at Monza rewards whoever nails the tow and punishes anyone who gets it wrong by even a car length, so Russell’s cushion could evaporate the moment cars start queuing up on the pit straight looking for a slipstream.

What Russell does have, uniquely among the front runners, is a team-mate who has already been told his qualifying lap doesn’t matter for grid position. Antonelli is expected to tow Russell around Monza during qualifying, effectively gifting Mercedes an advantage nobody else on the grid can replicate. It is a strange thing to watch a championship leader hand his nearest title rival a boost, but Antonelli’s grid penalty means his own lap time is academic, so Mercedes may as well use him as a battering ram for Russell’s benefit.

Verstappen and Red Bull Finally Find Some Balance

Friday was miserable for Verstappen. He didn’t even appear in FP1, handing the RB22 to Ayumu Iwasa while Red Bull tried to work out what was wrong with the car, and when he did get in it for FP2 he complained about grip, brakes and a car that bounced around like it was auditioning for a rodeo. None of that carried into Saturday morning. Verstappen ended FP3 third, close enough to Russell and Hamilton that Red Bull will fancy a genuine shot at a front-row lockout being disrupted.

The turnaround coincided with race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase returning to the pit wall after handing his headset to incoming replacement Tom Hart for practice, and Verstappen sounded a good deal happier on the radio than he had a day earlier. He briefly ran second on medium tyres without even the benefit of a tow, before switching to softs late in the session to post his final time. Whatever Red Bull changed overnight, it worked, though anyone expecting Verstappen to challenge for the title this season should remember he’s still 130 points off the lead with 11 races to go, a gap that a good Saturday at Monza does nothing to close.

Piastri’s Frustration Boils Over on the Radio

Not everyone left FP3 in a good mood. Oscar Piastri spent large chunks of the session complaining over team radio about traffic and his inability to find a useful tow for his qualifying simulation runs, and it showed: he ended up eighth after Russell’s own flying lap ruined his final effort. Piastri has had a difficult run of it this year, and a scrappy practice session where he can’t even complete a clean lap without another car in the way is hardly the confidence boost McLaren needed heading into a session where track position at the start of the lap matters as much as outright pace.

Elsewhere, the session’s only real drama came from Liam Lawson, who spun at the first chicane, an incident that briefly livened up what was otherwise a fairly sedate hour of running. Both Williams cars are now under investigation for potential yellow flag infringements, and Alexander Albon has separately been handed a warning for incorrectly using an escape road, the sort of administrative footnote that rarely changes a result but does add to the pile of paperwork stewards will be working through before qualifying gets going.

What It All Means Before Qualifying

Qualifying at Monza starts at 14:00 UTC, check the calendar for your local time, and on the strength of FP3 Russell walks in as favourite. But favourite status at a track built around slipstreams and traffic management is a fragile thing, and with barely a couple of tenths covering four cars, the smallest miscalculation on the out lap could hand pole to Hamilton, Verstappen or Norris just as easily. Antonelli’s grid penalty removes him from the equation as a pole contender, but turns him into the most interesting variable on the grid, a de facto tow truck for his own championship rival. Whether that arrangement looks quite so sensible once the lights go out on Sunday is a different question entirely.

FP3 Results, 2026 Italian Grand Prix