The Brit was beaten by F1 World Drivers’ Championship rival Nico Rosberg in 2016, who ended up winning by 15 seconds from his Mercedes team-mate.
This time around, Hamilton will likely be battling his new team-mate Valtteri Bottas as well as the two Ferraris of Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen on the team’s home track.
But the weather will play a huge role in qualifying as the rain continues to fall – Vettel took pole and the race win here in similar conditions.
Italian Grand Prix 2017 qualifying LIVE
2.15pm: UPDATE! The update is…there is no update. The only thing the FIA have said (other than that we can wait another 15 minutes for news) is that there will be a minimum of 10 minutes’ notice before any restart.
2pm: Perhaps predictably, we are now told the next information update will be at 2.15pm. This could go on ad infinitum it appears.
If it does, we will try to qualify tomorrow morning as we did in Austin two years ago which would make Sunday an even more fun day.
1.55pm: Scratch that…the weather is “swirling around”, according to race director Charlie Whiting. The safety car driver says there could still be aquaplaning on the straight and it is now raining heavily again.
Oh dear. This is getting tedious now. More news at 2pm…
1.45pm: Huzzah! The rain has eased and the track is drying. We will get underway again at 2pm. Excellent.
1.30pm: At least another 15-minute delay. I hope this doesn’t go on for too long…
1.15pm: Looks like the rain is easing off although still falling. The safety car is out doing a track inspection and it still looks pretty precarious to me. The restart of the session has been officially delayed and we will be given another update at 1.30pm.
1.06pm: RED FLAG!
I don’t think anybody enjoyed that bit of qualifying. Just as the session started, the rain got going again and the drivers on track were all complaining about a lack of grip and visibility.
Romain Grosjean of Haas was vocal in his complaints and it is his crash, which happened on the home straight with nothing around him, that sees the session stopped.
“I told you it was too dangerous,” Grosjean fumes over team radio.
“It was stupid to let us qualify. I’m sorry, it was stupid.”
12.50pm: The rain appears to have stopped so we should get some safe qualifying on track although the circuit is still very wet. FP3 this morning only saw seven men set times.