Mercedes’ George Russell topped Friday practice at the Italian Grand Prix from Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.

Russell was 0.120 seconds quicker than Leclerc, with Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli, who will start the race from the back with a grid penalty, just 0.021secs behind the Ferrari.

McLaren’s Lando Norris was fourth fastest from the second Ferrari of Lewis Hamilton and McLaren’s Oscar Piastri.

Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, still yet to win a race this year, was 0.818secs off the pace with ninth-fastest time, behind the Racing Bulls of Arvid Lindblad and Oliver Bearman’s Haas.

Ferrari have introduced an upgraded engine for this race but its performance will not be clear until qualifying and the race.

But the Italian team have lagged behind Mercedes on engine performance all season – Hamilton says they have regularly been losing 0.4secs on the straights – so to be as close as they were on a track which is so power-sensitive because of the amount of time spent at full throttle was encouraging on the face of it.

Antonelli’s penalty is caused by using too many engine components this season after reliability problems earlier in the year. Russell will take one at a subsequent race, most likely the Azerbaijan Grand Prix later this month.

Mercedes have chosen this race because they hope the long straights will give him a decent chance of recovering a strong result.

And the Italian, who leads Hamilton and Russell in the championship by 59 points, was the quickest on the race-simulation runs towards the end of the session.

The race runs were inconclusive as Mercedes used the hard compound tyres, Ferrari the softs and Verstappen the mediums.

Antonelli was more than 0.2secs quicker than Russell on average. Norris, also on the hard tyre, was just under 0.2secs slower than Russell.

Meanwhile, F1 has announced that it will host a three-day event for fans before next season in Milan on 18-20 February.

A successor to the F1 Live event in London’s O2 Arena in 2025, it will feature all 11 teams and their drivers as well as music and entertainment.