Fernando Alonso has made it a positive opening day for Ferrari at the Monaco Grand Prix, heading the timesheets for back-to-back practice sessions on the event’s opening day.
The Ferrari driver lapped the Principality’s circuit under the 1m15s barrier, finishing 0.1s quicker than Nico Rosberg’s Mercedes GP.
Alonso’s quickest time came some 38 minutes into the session, and he was never headed for the remainder of its 90-minute duration, when a light shower put paid to anyone being able to laps quicker around the circuit.
The rain never fell hard enough to tempt any of the teams to run with intermediate tyres, and the teams racked up the mileage in the mixed conditions to gain as much of an understanding of the conditions and their cars’ handling as possible. Indeed, the teams have rarely been less frugal with their track mileage, with some drivers having already racked up the equivalent of a race distance at Monaco across the two practice sessions so far!
One driver in need of mileage was Nico Rosberg, who lost valuable track time in the opening practice session, but vaulted to the second-quickest overall time in the afternoon’s proceedings, stopping the recent rot of dominance enjoyed by his team-mate, Michael Schumacher (who finished fifth-quickest in this session), since the Spanish Grand Prix.
McLaren’s unassuming Thursday pace continued into the afternoon, with Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button split by Force India’s Adrian Sutil.
Traffic appeared to be something more of an issue, although it was something of a reversal of the usual trend to see Ferrari’s Felipe Massa getting in the way of the rookie runners on a hot lap.
Again, seeming to dispel the assertions that the backmarkers would be miles off the pace, both Lotus’ and Virgin Racing’s cars lapped within 4 seconds of Alonso’s quickest time in the afternoon.
It would seem that suggestions to split the qualifying session up were indeed ridiculous.
2010 Monaco Grand Prix Practice 2 Session Times:
[Original image via GP Update]
Richard Bailey
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