Italian GP qualifying result changes as penalty affects Lewis Hamilton grid position

Lewis Hamilton will start the Italian Grand Prix higher than he initially qualified after a rival was slapped with a post-session penalty. It was an underwhelming Saturday for Ferrari at their home race which almost saw both their cars fail to make it into the top 10 as Hamilton and Charles Leclerc struggled for power.

Hamilton was just 0.001 seconds away from a Q2 exit while Leclerc was only 0.008 seconds clear of the drop himself. But progress to Q3 they did and they ended up limiting the damage done by their setup problems by qualifying fourth and fifth, Leclerc going slightly quicker than Hamilton in the end.

And Ferrari have been boosted further by a grid penalty for Oscar Piastri. The Aussie has been punished for getting in the way of Liam Lawson during the second part of the session, which cost the New Zealander a chance to make it into Q3 in his second substitute appearance driving for Red Bull, filling in for the injured Isack Hadjar.

After investigating the matter, the stewards have confirmed a three-place grid drop for Piastri. He qualified third on the road but will start sixth on Sunday as a result of the punishment, despite the stewards agreeing that the impeding of Lawson was "inadvertent".

Explaining the punishment, the stewards wrote: "On leaving the pits, the driver of Car 81 [Piastri] was advised 'Verstappen, Lawson and Sainz just crossing, Sainz has pitted, Just Verstappen and Lawson, watch out for them as you join'.

"The driver of Car 81 stated that he was not alerted to the fact that Verstappen and Lawson were on push laps but realised as he was almost at turn one that Verstappen was on a push lap. He slowed significantly and kept to the right to allow Verstappen to pass but was unable to do anything to avoid impeding Lawson who was close behind.

"The stewards accept that with the information he had, and the situation he was placed in, the driver of Car 81 had, at this stage, no other options available and hence, inadvertently, and also unnecessarily, impeded Car 30 [Lawson]. Therefore the standard penalty of a drop of three grid positions is imposed."

Fourth on the grid for Hamilton is a strong result given the problems he experienced during the session. He said: "It was definitely very, very tough. The car felt really good in practice and then, in qualifying, I didn't change anything so I felt good going into Q1, and Q1 was solid.

"And then we sat and waited, we waited very long in the pit lane for the first run of Q2 and, for some reason, we just didn't have the pace. I'm not really sure why, whether it was tyre pressures or tyres temperatures or whatever. So we need to look into that. And the execution in Q3 was pretty bad – I ended up in the middle of nowhere, with nobody [to follow].

"When you're following another car, you arrive several kilometres faster into a corner and so the braking distances adjust. It's all about getting into a rhythm and I got really out of rhythm for run one. Q3 run two, it wasn't a terrible lap but all the references were different and, ultimately, we just didn't maximise it."