REPORT: Strong Friday in Italy

Atlassian Williams Racing have begun poring over the data after one of our strongest Fridays of the season so far.

Carlos Sainz finished P3 and Alex Albon P7 in both FP1 and FP2, with the team right in the mix from the outset at Monza.

Both drivers completed 25 laps during the opening hour of running, which was briefly halted by a red flag to clear gravel from the circuit.

Carlos’ 1:20.650 secured him third at the end of FP1, while Alex ended the session 0.423s back in seventh after aborting his final Soft-tyre push lap.

The afternoon followed a similar story. Carlos once again claimed P3 with a best time of 1:19.974 from his 30 laps, while Alex’s earlier effort of 1:20.179 kept him P7 after he backed off on his final qualifying simulation.

"Today has been a positive day and we seem to have good pace," Carlos shared.

"There are still a few areas which I’d like to finetune, so I can feel a bit more comfortable throughout a few of the corners, but it’s good to have decent pace across both long and short runs.

"We’ll do some work on the setup tonight and hopefully we can carry this good form the rest of the weekend."

Alex added: "Honestly, it's been quite a tricky day with our big run plan, but we did get through everything. The cars are quick, and we had reasonable race pace today, so we're in a good place; we just need to make sure that we carry that through to tomorrow.

"I think we have sweet spots and we've seen that time and time again this year. Our outlaps and getting the tyres working in the window is going to be tricky, so we just need to make sure we can execute what we want to do.

"I think this weekend we have the ability to score some good points. We've traditionally been on top of the midfield here and I think we can do that again."