» Monaco GP 2nd Practice: Alonso quickest again

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:

	Driver	Team	Time	Laps
1.	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	1:14.904	36
2.	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes GP	+ 0.109	39
3.	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull Renault	+ 0.195	47
4.	Felipe Massa	Ferrari	+ 0.216	44
5.	Michael Schumacher	Mercedes GP	+ 0.239	38
6.	Robert Kubica	Renault	+ 0.288	38
7.	Lewis Hamilton	McLaren Mercedes	+ 0.345	32
8.	Adrian Sutil	Force India Mercedes	+ 0.556	42
9.	Jenson Button	McLaren Mercedes	+ 0.715	37
10.	Mark Webber	Red Bull Renault	+ 0.716	28
11.	Vitaly Petrov	Renault	+ 0.842	44
12.	Sébastien Buemi	Toro Rosso Ferrari	+ 1.372	46
13.	Nico Hülkenberg	Williams Cosworth	+ 1.444	48
14.	Rubens Barrichello	Williams Cosworth	+ 1.618	37
15.	Vitantonio Liuzzi	Force India Mercedes	+ 1.624	42
16.	Pedro de la Rosa	Sauber Ferrari	+ 1.695	36
17.	Kamui Kobayashi	Sauber Ferrari	+ 1.914	45
18.	Jaime Alguersuari	Toro Rosso Ferrari	+ 2.119	28
19.	Heikki Kovalainen	Lotus Cosworth	+ 3.280	47
20.	Lucas di Grassi	Virgin Racing Cosworth	+ 3.574	38
21.	Jarno Trulli	Lotus Cosworth	+ 3.763	13
22.	Timo Glock	Virgin Racing Cosworth	+ 3.817	41
23.	Karun Chandhok	HRT Cosworth	+ 5.409	35
24.	Bruno Senna	HRT Cosworth	+ 7.244	11