Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton set the fourth and fifth fastest times respectively in qualifying for the Italian Grand Prix, at the end of an extremely closely contested session in which, as is often the case at Monza, the gaps were very small.

The two SF-26s will start from the second row of the grid tomorrow, as Oscar Piastri, who was third quickest has been given a grid penalty for impeding another car.

Charles and Lewis made it through the first part of qualifying without too much difficulty, while Q2 proved more challenging, as they progressed to the final phase with the ninth and tenth fastest times. On his first attempt in Q3, Leclerc stopped the clocks with a competitive 1'22"004 to go fourth, while Hamilton's lap was compromised by the lack of a tow, having been the last driver to leave the pits. For the final attempt, both SF-26s were fitted with new Soft tyres, with Charles and Lewis heading back out with three minutes remaining, looking to pick up a useful tow. The Monegasque was unable to improve on his previous time but remained fourth, while Lewis made a significant improvement, setting a time of 1'22"011 to move up to fifth, immediately behind his team-mate.

The extremely small gaps seen today, together with the indications from the long runs completed in free practice, suggest that the race will be very closely fought. This evening, the team will work through every detail in preparation for tomorrow, looking to maximise the opportunities that come from having both cars starting close together, with the aim of securing a strong team result and a good points haul in front of our home crowd.

Charles Leclerc: This is a very demanding track on which to optimise the PU and driving style on this year's car, and we didn't manage to fully optimize. I'm very happy for Pierre (Gasly) who took pole today. He did an incredible job and delivered when he had the chance.

I expect us to be stronger tomorrow compared to where we are in qualifying trim, keeping in mind that our competitors are very strong on the straights. We will leverage our speed in the corners and see where we can make gains. Yo-yo-racing will be a topic tomorrow, unless we all align on the same PU strategy which is unlikely.

We will race for our tifosi tomorrow and do everything to make them proud.

Lewis Hamilton: The car felt strong in FP3 and we showed solid pace early in qualifying. In the end, we didn't quite maximise Q3 and it cost us, but congratulations to Pierre (Gasly) on an incredible result.

Overall, I'm encouraged by our direction. The team is working incredibly hard, bringing updates and constantly pushing to extract more performance, and I'm so proud of everyone here at the circuit and back in Maranello.

The support of the Tifosi means a lot and I'm incredibly grateful for it. It's a tight fight at the front and the opportunity is there to move forward, so tomorrow we'll race hard, stay focused on what we need to do, and give everything to deliver in front of this crowd.

Fred Vasseur: From a team perspective, we were expecting to suffer a bit here because of the layout of the track, so to be just one tenth off Russell's time is a good result. Q2 was a bit more complicated as we had an issue with the battery on the out-lap and we came quite close to being in a much worse position.

Looking ahead to tomorrow, our race pace was decent yesterday, as has been the case at the past few races. For sure, strategy will play an important role because you have to decide how to deploy the energy. Everything is still possible tomorrow, but we will have to do everything perfectly if we want to give our home fans something to cheer about.