Hamilton and Russell fear early Mercedes qualifying exit 

Russell ended Friday practice only ninth in the timesheets and the best part of a second down on the benchmark pace set by Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz. 

Things were worse for Hamilton, who complained of a significant performance deficit in his W14 on Monza’s long straights and languished a lowly 17th. 

After a difficult second practice, Hamilton said he was “hoping” to reach Q3. 

"I'm hoping to get into the top 10, getting into Q3 would be nice, and then we'll see where it goes from there,” said Hamilton. 

"With our current pace, I don't know how easy it will be to get into Q3. That's what we'll be working on overnight.

"I'm just going to keep my fingers crossed and hope that we can get there.”

Russell, who was fifth-fastest in FP1 and two places ahead of Hamilton, acknowledged it will be a “tight battle” to make it into Saturday’s top-10 shootout.

"I think it's really close, as always at the moment, between McLaren, Aston, Ferrari and even Williams are getting in the mix, especially on Saturday.

"So we're going to have to really nail it, I think even to get to Q3 is going to be a tight battle.

"If you nail it, you could be second row of the grid, if you just don't quite nail it, you could be down in P8, P10 region, so that's exciting."