Monaco Grand Prix Practice – Alonso Tops Time Charts

Practice today at the Monaco Grand Prix was held under changeable weather conditions, interrupted briefly by light rain towards the end of the session.

Luckily the rain never amounted to much more than a few sprinkles so most of the teams managed to complete their planned testing programs.

The exception was Jarno Trulli whose Lotus Cosworth T127 experienced engine failure after only 11 laps and Bruno Senna who also managed to complete only eleven laps during the afternoon session.

At the top of the time charts two time Monaco winner Fernando Alonso was the only car to get under 1:15 seconds, unlike Barcelona the lap times were pretty closely grouped with the top six drivers all less than three tenths of a second apart. Mercedes GP has gone back to the short wheel base chassis for Monaco due to its tight and twisty nature and the car seems to be performing well with Rosberg finishing second fastest and Michael Schumacher in 5th behind Vettel (3rd) and Massa (4th) with Robert Kubica setting 6th fastest time of the day. Talking about his cars performance in practice today Fernando Alonso said:

“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 nearly took pole with a car that was far off the F10 in terms of its potential.”

Monaco GP Second Practice Session Times

At the rear of the field it appears that Virgin Racing has finally solved their reliability problems between them Glock and Di Grassi completing 80 laps of the famous Monaco Grand Prix circuit.

Qualify is extremely important at Monaco as it is almost to overtake in the race so don’t forget to tune in on Saturday to see who will be able to put the best lap together. Click Here for Broadcast times

Tagged as: Bruno Senna, Felipe Massa, Fernando Alonso, Jarno Trulli, Micahel Schumacher, Monaco Grand Prix (2010), Nico Rosberg, Practice, Robert Kubica, Sebastian Vettel