Renault F1 Team began the Heineken Italian Grand Prix weekend with a stop-start day's practice at a rain hit Monza on Friday.

Three separate red flag incidents during a wet Free Practice 1 made running intermittent with Free Practice 2 completed under drier, more representative conditions.

Daniel Ricciardo ended the day as the team's quicker driver in ninth place just 0.089secs ahead of Nico Hulkenberg in eleventh.

FP1 was rain-affected with both drivers completing runs on Pirelli's Wet (blue) and Intermediate (green) tyres to get a feel for the car and the circuit. As the track cleared up - in between a number of red flag stoppages - other teams ran dry tyres towards the end of the session with both Nico and Daniel opting not to go out due to the mixed conditions.

The rain eased in the afternoon for Free Practice 2, with smaller spots still visible around the circuit. In Free Practice 2, both drivers completed the usual short-run programme in the early stages before focusing on long runs in the second-half of the session.

Our programme was interrupted with the weather, but we have useful data to work through both in wet and dry conditions. Rain is a possibility for the remainder of the weekend.

Nico Hulkenberg: "It was okay today, although, our running was a little bit interrupted with the weather. Overall, everything went well today. I felt comfortable in the car from this morning, the baseline feels good, and we have the usual tweaks to make here and there. On a whole, it's good and I was happy enough both in wet and dry conditions. I'll welcome the weather as it comes."

Daniel Ricciardo: "It's always fun around Monza and it's good to be back here. It was a pretty positive day and it was nice to get a bit of wet weather driving in. The morning went relatively well and the afternoon was solid. We probably managed more running than we first expected as the weather looked worse on the radar. I was happy to get laps under my belt and the car felt good. I'm comfortable in both dry and wet and we have a decent base for both set-ups."

Remi Taffin, Engine Technical Director: "We were quite lucky to have a dry track for most of the afternoon so we made the most of it. We were able to evaluate both types of tyres and do a long run on the softer compound. The results are pretty encouraging on both sides of the garage. In the end, it was particularly good because yesterday we wondered how many kilometres we would be able to achieve on dry tarmac today. Put together with this morning's session, when we were able to run in wet conditions on the Intermediate tyres with rain a possibility for Sunday. Between FP1 and FP2, we were able to achieve our programme in preparation for Saturday and race day. It was a good day's work."

Check out our Friday gallery from Monza, here.