Alfa Romeo F1 Team Stake kicked off proceedings for its home race, the Italian Grand Prix in Monza, with two practice session in full sunshine.

The day turned out to be a challenging one for the team, which started its Friday action on the back foot with a software issue costing both drivers some time in FP1: however, good work from the team helped recover the lost time and provided the engineers with the data necessary to assess the new front suspension and make a step forward in performance ahead of tomorrow's qualifying.

Valtteri Bottas: "Racing in front of so many of our colleagues from our factory in Hinwil and with so many Alfa Romeo F1 Team Stake shirts on the stands is special, we could feel the support from the fans and hopefully we can repay their love this weekend. Our Friday hasn't been the smoothest, starting from a small software issue, which we fixed but which cost us some time in the first session. We made some progress in FP2 and we still have one session of practice ahead of us to get on top of the setup before qualifying. We need to get some work done tonight and make a step forward to be as competitive as we can be in qualifying."

Zhou Guanyu: "It's great to be in Monza, our home race, and the atmosphere is incredible, but despite all the enthusiasm, our work today fell short of what we expected. We had a technical issue at the beginning of FP1 but, in general, I had the feeling something was not right throughout the sessions. We have to understand what is wrong and make a step forward tomorrow: we will all work hard to do that, to have a good performance in qualifying and bring home a good result for the team on Saturday and Sunday."

Check out our Friday gallery from Monza here.