Hello and welcome to ESPNF1's coverage of the Italian Grand Prix from Monza. It feels like we haven't been away (well, it was only five days ago we were describing the action at Spa for you) but we're more than ready for another classic race at another classic circuit.

The main difference between a week ago and today is it's dry in Italy! No threat of the Friday washout we saw in Belgium, the track temperature is up at 27C and the air temperature is already 22C. As Laurence puts it in the Monza paddock: "It's going to be a hot one"

Did I mention Laurence is in the paddock just then? I think I did, and you can keep up to date with all the happenings via our Twitter feed here. Ask him where he had breakfast; my money is on McLaren.

Anyway, if you'd like to ask Laurence anything then you can do so via Twitter, or you can get in touch with me here on commentary duty using the link above. We'll endeavour to answer as many questions and publish as many comments as possible

We do have a few driver changes to let you know about for today's session, and the most notable one is at HRT. Ma Qing Hua replaces Narain Karthikeyan for FP1 and becomes the first Chinese driver to participate in a grand prix weekend. Valtteri Bottas is also in for Bruno Senna at Williams again, and Jules Bianchi is in for Paul di Resta at Force India

Siddhesh has emailed in to ask: "Is the forecast dry for the next two days too? I think we have had enough rain to last the entire F1 season!"

It certainly is Siddhesh, in fact it looks like the chance of rain this weekend is 0% and the temperature will not be lower than 25C for any of the sessions. Summer's arrived!

I for one am excited to see Ma at HRT - he impressed the team at the Silverstone Young Driver Test earlier this year. Obviously it's a big bit of PR for Chinese motorsport, but he now has a whole dry session to show what he can do

Oh, and don't forget Jerome d'Ambrosio too - in at Lotus in place of Romain Grosjean for the whole weekend. The pressure is off in many respects and he'll be pleased that the weather has been kind to him.

The light goes green at the end of the pit lane and Vergne is the first man out on track, followed by Ma

Button heads out in the McLaren - he's not fielded too many questions on his own performance this weekend (we'll get to that in a second) - and we're getting our first look at cars with 'skinny' rear wings in low downforce configuration

Stuart emails in to ask: "Will Red Bull get their limiter right this weekend? They missed a trick in Spa last week and also last year here at Monza..."

The Red Bull was hitting the limiter early at Spa last weekend but its set-up was hardly bad; Vettel came through to second place. And don't forget Vettel won here with his set-up too despite not having the best top speed. So I expect Red Bull to be strong again

We have some early times set already; Massa (with flo-viz on the Ferrari rear wing) does a 1:28.370 while Hamilton has done a 1:31.028

We are aware that both Ma and d'Ambrosio are not appearing on the live standings page and we're working on getting them to show - thanks for the emails. Incidentally, Ma has just said that the track is a bit cold in the shade and there are leaves on the circuit that need some clearing up

Everyone's back in the pits after installation laps, so now we can reference the elephant in the room: Lewis Hamilton's future. He says nothing has been signed and that his management is in discussions with McLaren, but neither Mercedes nor Hamilton have said there's nothing in the rumours that he will join next year. What are your thoughts? Would you like to see Hamilton at Mercedes?

While that debate starts up, Pic has headed out on his own in the Marussia

Pic has technically set a time - a 2:08.214 - which is 40s slower than Massa's best time

Pic is back in and the track is quiet again

Rob emails in to say: "Hamilton going to Mercedes would not be a good idea. Apart from winning one race and moving backwards consistently after that, Mercedes have not proven that they are or ever will be a force to be reckoned with. If Hamilton moves anywhere it should be to RBR (I'd love to see him in a Newey designed car) or Ferrari. He's a great driver and great drivers should be in great cars, Mercedes don't have a great car."

It's a fair point Rob, although the logic would be more focused on 2014 with the new regulations (both engine and technical) which is a big opportunity for Mercedes just as 2009 was one for Brawn

Ma heads out to join Raikkonen on track

Rahulan asks: "Coming from a Ferrari fanatic in India. When are we going to see the next big upgrade to our car? Is it coming anytime soon?"

Ferrari hasn't mentioned a major upgrade, it plans on just developing the car as quickly as possible (as most of the top teams do), with new parts likely to come on to the car at each race

Raikkonen and then Ma both bounce over the kerbs at turn one after outbraking themselves

Everyone on the hard tyre for this session, and Raikkonen goes fastest on a 1:28.175

Raikkonen improves to a 1:27.369, while Ma is almost nine seconds off the pace with his first lap

Bjorn's thoughts on Hamilton and Mercedes: "If Mercedes gets a car in order, it would be fun to measure him vs. Rosberg. But what would be even more fun - seeing Schumi in a McLaren, if that's on the table…"

D'Ambrosio's first flying lap in the Lotus at a grand prix weekend is a 1:30.794

Luthando says: "Although I believe that both parties need each other, my thoughts are that Hamilton needs McLaren more than the other way around so Hammy better sign, but he needs to insist on a 1 year deal just to let McLaren know that he's serious about racing and insists on a winning car, that way he can jump ship to RedBull next year if McLaren don't produce the goods. Otherwise Hamilton needs to give Mercedes another year to convince (the fans) that they can achieve gold."

Ma now 7.5s off the pace - he's going to improve fairly quickly until he reaches the limit of the car - the HRT has a big rear wing on it while most of the others are running very small low-downforce wings

D'Ambrosio does a 1:28.816 after a losing the rear a touch in turn one

Hamilton locks up in to turn one; there will be a lot of braking issues in to there

Ma improves to a 1:33.539

Hamilton goes fastest with a 1:26.980

Button watches on in his McLaren, no doubt wondering if his telemetry could end up all over the internet again...

Dylan emails in to say: "Personally, I think Hamilton is better served at McLaren. They are a continous front running team, he has been there since he was (11?), and has formed a great relationship with Button.

"Mercedes promises A LOT but delivers little, except for one flash in the pan of China (and Monaco until Schumi was penalised). Also I would love to see Schumi continue on next year, everyone will miss him when he's gone, and he won't be back unless he's in a management role at Mercedes/AMG (whatever it is to be called next year). Also, McLaren could not find anyone better than Hamilton to replace him with if he left, so they will be trying their absolute hardest to keep him there."

Hamilton improves to a 1:26.346, while Perez is second in 1:27.115

After Kimi bumped across the kerbs at the first chicane Lotus is inspecting the underside of his car

D'Ambrosio has gone quicker than Raikkonen too now with a 1:27.180

Schumacher goes second with a 1:26.545

The main target for the teams in this session will be to evaluate the low-downforce specifications they are running. Alonso's looks good as he does a 1:26.072 to go fastest

Schumacher then beats the Ferrari with a 1:25.422. The Tifosi will be enjoying this

Massa drifts the Ferrari out of the first chicane - looks good but not fast

Button has gone second fastest with a 1:25.856. Don't forget he's been an impressive second on both occasions here for McLaren

Vettel is yet to say a comparative time, but he is out on track now...

Vettel goes 17th with a 1.28.175

Button improves within 0.3s of Schumacher - he's the fastest man in sector one

Grosjean has just arrived at the Lotus motorhome for what is likely to be a very frustrating weekend for him

Ma is 4.2s slower than de la Rosa - the only real reference - but is back out on track now trying to improve

A big lock-up from Vettel and he misses the first chicane completely

Massa is up in fourth place - 0.080s slower than Alonso - so unsurprisingly both Ferraris are showing strongly

Leigh from Australia has asked about speed traps, and de la Rosa is actually quickest through it at 339kph, just ahead of Hulkenberg, Schumacher, Rosberg, Perez and Raikkonen all at 338kph

Rocky's emailed in his thoughts on the Hamilton rumours:

"Methinks it might work well for Hamilton to make move to the Silver Arrows reason being that, Mclaren are a highly inconsistent team, they favour both drivers to fight each other to the end much to the detriment of both championships and have relatively failed to give Lewis a championship winning material car since his won WC in 2008!

"Despite Mercedes not having showed their hands yet, let alone proving to be on par with the leading contenders (Rosberg must have been high on something yesterday commenting on the contrary), they have a pretty talented team of human capital plus resources to turn their fortunes around and he may have, although currently an outside chance, of being the number driver at Mercedes like they are pushing with MSC.

"Wishing him all the best of luck in his future career endeavours."

Stuart on Hamilton's future:

"I believe Lewis is at his best when everything around him is in synergy. He needs to be comfortable and he needs to be in a happy bubble. He has been a McLaren man and part of the McLaren family since a youngster. For him to move would be a major disruption to his headspace, which is not to say it won't happen, but personally I think he's better off at home with McLaren."

Lots of good opinions from you all on what could or should happen next for Lewis. Oliver has a Mercedes only question for us: "Early days, but Schumacher at the top is interesting. In the early season, all the tech-talk was around the tyres and the Double-DRS on the Merc. I remember a lot of people earmarking Monza as a track Schumacher and Rosberg would have a good chance at. Thoughts from you guys?"

Personally I tipped Schumacher to win this weekend (a very romantic tip) but one word of caution is the DRS is not as effective here because the teams run the special low-downforce car configurations which include much smaller rear wings.

Ma improves to a 1:31.697 - 2.3s slower than de la Rosa. He needs to find about 0.6s in sector one, a second in the middle sector and another 0.8s in the final sector

Rosberg locks up and skips the first chicane

On his next full lap, Rosberg improves to a 1:25.762

Hamilton locking up in to the Variante della Roggia

Bianchi improves to a 1:27.192 for Force India - he's down in 15th place

Alonso with the quickest middle sector but he stays fourth quickest

Vettel has a special helmet design for this weekend, and I've heard an explanation for what it is marking. Any guesses?

Hamilton improves to a 1:25.944

Button locks up and bounces across the kerbs at the Roggia chicane

You'll have noticed Ma Qing Hua is now appearing on our live standings - hopefully D'Ambrosio will soon pop up on there too - he's 14th quickest at present on a 1:27.180 and in the pits

Ian emails in with a guess on Vettel's helmet, but it's not to mark his first win here with Toro Rosso in 2008...

Oliver asks if Vettel's helmet signals a move to Mercedes? Not quite!

We have a winner. Alexander Pappas take a bow, it is indeed a new helmet design to mark Vettel's 50th helmet design. Yes, FIFTY.

The speed traps are also showing Button and Hulkenberg as the quickest men in each sector in terms of top speeds, but de la Rosa still has the quickest overall speed

Perez skips the Roggia chicane

Raikkonen is down in 12th place but improves to a 1:26.064 and 7th

Ma improving once again to take another 0.4s off his previous best - a 1:31.239 now

Ian emails in to say: "Hi, How many helmet designs did Jackie Stewart have? ... Maybe 1....probably only ever had a few helmets."

That is true, but Vettel has a good sense of humour and this one I expect is firmly tongue in cheek

It's gone quite quiet on the track, with only five cars out there and 15 mins to go

Both McLaren's on track, but we haven't seen that many times improve for a while and Schumacher remains 0.3s clear at the top

Hamilton starts a flying lap - both McLarens have been running a low-downforce wing today, but Button was successful two years ago running a higher downforce one than his team-mate

Hamilton locks up in to the Roggia chicane and skips the corner. Another lock up follows at turn one the following lap

Looking at the timing screen right now, there's not one green sector which means nobody is improving at all

Comparisons for the reserve drivers; Bianchi is 0.7s slower than Hulkenberg and Bottas is just over 0.1s slower than Maldonado

Schumacher with four attempts at turning in to the first chicane before finally backing out and cutting it

A busy end to the session with every driver bar Ma out on track

Heavy fuel runs going on though as we're still seeing no green sectors

Bad news for the Tifosi - Alonso has stopped at the first chicane and has climbed out of the car

On-board replays show Alonso hitting the brakes and the car stopping very quickly and engine appearing to cut out...

Alonso had gone third on a 1:25.800 but has now dropped to fourth

Maldonado has stopped out on track with his DRS open and stuck in gear. He's on the run to the first Lesmo and looking at the rear of his car

We're green again with one minute to go

Massa does his fastest first sector of the session - as does Ma - so we're actually seeing a bit of improvements as the flag prepares to come out

Button is told his pace "looks very strong, very consistent"

That radio message hints at race pace rather than outright one-lap speed for McLaren

Raikkonen attacks the Roggia chicane and launches the Lotus off the kerb on the inside - that will have hurt on landing

Nobody else will improve and that means the Tifosi see Michael Schumacher set the fastest time. He's 0.3s quicker than Button, Rosberg and Alonso, with Massa, Hamilton and Raikkonen all within 0.65s

D'Ambrosio ends his first session 15th - 1.7s slower than Schumacher, while Ma was slowest for HRT but got within two seconds of the more experienced de la Rosa by the end of the session

We'll send Laurence out in the paddock to try and find out what happened to Alonso and Maldonado - seemed like engine and hydraulics to me - so make sure you're following our Twitter feed between now and FP2 (when hopefully, d'Ambrosio will finally appear). Thanks for all your questions and comments, bye for now.