The Ferrari of Fernando Alonso again led the way in the second session of free practice that has just finished at the Monaco street circuit. With a best time of 1.14.904, the Spanish Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro driver confirmed the lead he established in the morning’s first session. He dominated the ninety minutes available for the 24 cars on the track in preparation for Sunday’s Monaco Grand Prix, the sixth round of the Formula 1 world championship. Nico Rosberg’s Mercedes was second fastest (1.15.013) with Sebastian Vettel’s Red Bull third (1.15.099). It was also a good first day for Felipe Massa, who set the fourth fastest time in 1.15.120.
It was a good start to the weekend for the team even though, as is traditionally the case here in Monte Carlo, track conditions can radically change from Thursday to Saturday. Both drivers had a good feeling from the car, which they tried with various different fuel loads and with both types of tyre, first hard, then soft. As usual on the unique Monegasque track the two Ferrari drivers finished the session with practice starts on the grid. Now there is a rest day. The lights will turn green again on Saturday morning at 11am local time for the third and final session of free practice, after which there will be the all-important appointment with qualifying.
Fernando Alonso, P1/1st - P2/1st“It’s only Thursday, so the main aim was to understand how the tyres work and get confident with the circuit. On this track a major set up change might give you half a tenth, but trusting your driving can see you gain half a second. We therefore worked on finding the right feeling with the car and on making it easy to drive. There is still a lot of work to do and quite a margin for improvement. The track conditions will get better by Saturday, given that so many cars from the different categories will be running over the next couple of days. I hope that in two days time I will again find a well balanced car. I can understand that there could be a level of pessimism after the show of strength from Red Bull in Barcelona qualifying, but we know that here, having the right set-up can make more of a difference than pure aerodynamic downforce and we already have a good baseline, given that last year, Kimi (Raikkonen) nearly took pole with a car that was far off the F10 in terms of its potential.”
Felipe Massa, P1/5th - P2/4th“The situation is definitely very different to Barcelona. From one week to the next I have found a much more stable car which is easy to drive and has much more grip. I have to say I can only be happy with the F10 and the way things went today. Having said that, there is still a lot to do to be done to be as well prepared as possible for the rest of the weekend. The traffic could be a problem, especially in Q1 and we will have to try and manage the situation as well as possible. Here it is always difficult to get a perfect lap: there are so many slow corners where you can lose a lot of time, which you never get back. However, getting it right is really especially satisfying.”
Stefano Domenicali, Ferrari team principal “This weekend has got off to a positive start for us, but we are well aware that the result of free practice does not tell you much and that, especially on an untypical track like this, the situation can change rapidly. There is still a lot of work to do to be as well prepared as possible for qualifying and the race, but we can be reasonably confident in affirming that we will be in the hunt. Now we have over a day and a half ahead of us to fine tune every detail in order to get out every last bit of potential from the package we have at our disposal.”
Chris Dyer, Ferrari chief engineer“I would say this was a good day. First of all, it’s always positive to be able to complete three hours of free practice around the Monaco track without doing any damage to the cars, which meant both drivers were able to work through their entire planned programme: we just had to shorten the time on some elements in the afternoon, because of the approaching rain. Both Felipe and Fernando said they were pleased with the handling of the car and managed to get both types of tyre brought here by Bridgestone to work well. Clearly, without knowing the fuel loads in the cars of our closest rivals, it’s hard to know exactly where we are compared to them, but I think I can safely say we should be able to fight for the top places on the starting grid.”
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