Red Bull’s Max Verstappen has been handed a five-place grid penalty for the Italian Grand Prix.
The Dutchman was second in practice, 0.143 seconds behind Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz, who will start from the back with his own grid penalty.
Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was third, quickest of those without a penalty, ahead of McLaren’s Lando Norris.
Mercedes’ George Russell was fifth, split from team-mate Lewis Hamilton by the second Red Bull of Sergio Perez.
The Alpines of Esteban Ocon and Fernando Alonso were eighth and ninth, ahead of Williams driver Alex Albon.
In view of the penalties for Verstappen and Sainz, Leclerc – who is trailing Verstappen by 109 points in the championship – looks an odds-on favourite for pole position.
But on race pace, Verstappen was comfortably the quickest, setting an average lap time on the medium tyres about 0.4secs quicker than Sainz, who was more than 0.5secs faster than Hamilton.
On the soft tyre, Leclerc was fastest, 0.6secs or so quicker than Russell.
Verstappen said he was not expecting the same level of advantage as he enjoyed two weeks ago at the Belgian Grand Prix, held on a high-speed track, but one with quite different characteristics to Monza.
“Monza is not like Spa in terms of track layout. It is low downforce but we never expected it to be like Spa. But if we can find a way to get even half way then I think we have a good chance.
“Ferrari look good. I’m not worried about it. We still have a few things to finalise but if you look at the long runs, I think we look quite good and that’s the most important for the race.”
The Mercedes drivers said they had lost performance between the first session and the second.
“It’s a bit of a strange day,” Russell said. “P1 was looking pretty strong but then Ferrari and Red Bull seemed to take a step forward compared to us – or maybe we have taken a step back as we were behind the McLaren in P2. So a bit of work to be done to understand what’s behind that.”
Russell also said he believed Mercedes were lagging behind Ferrari on the amount of energy available to deploy around the lap from the hybrid system.
“Generally speaking, we are lacking a bit of deployment,” he said. “I think we are similar to Red Bull but Ferrari seem to have the upper hand in terms of deployment as they have a bit more in the locker to deal with. It is something we are going to have to deal with.”
The other drivers facing grid drops are Perez, who has a 10-place penalty, as well as Hamilton, Alfa Romeo’s Valtteri Bottas and Alpha Tauri’s Yuki Tsunoda, who will all be at the back of the grid.
