GP Monaco, Free Practice 1: Alonso dominates ahead of Grosjean

Fernando Alonso was the fastest driver in the first free practice session at the Monaco GP. FP1 was suspended and then stopped with nine minutes to go due to the engine failure of Heikki Kovalainen's Caterham inside the tunnel.

An exploit from Lewis Hamilton was expected and instead in the first free practice session in Monte Carlo it was Fernando Alonso who impressed. The Ferrari driver lapped in 1'16”265, 365 thousandths better than Romain Grosjean in the Lotus. Third place for Sergio Perez with the Sauber, four and a half tenths behind the Red, while Hamilton closed FP1 482 thousandths behind the Cavallino driver, just 12 thousandths ahead of Pastor Maldonado with the Williams. Good performance from the winner of the Spanish GP, who precedes the other Ferrari driver Felipe Massa by eight hundredths. Kamui Kobayashi with the second Sauber is seventh at 773 thousandths, while the Top 10 is closed by other big names separated by just a few thousandths: Jenson Button with the McLaren, 0 seconds behind Alonso, precedes Sebastian Vettel with the Red Bull, another 925 thousandths behind ; 32 thousandths divide the world champion from Nico Rosberg in the first Mercedes. Therefore the top ten have delays of less than a second, Michael Schumacher in 39th suffers a gap of 11"1.

Free practice ended prematurely due to the red flags displayed due to the explosion of the engine of Kovalainen's Caterham just before the tunnel. The Finn found himself with the car emitting smoke and oil and the TV images from Vettel's camera, which passed shortly after, showed that visibility at that point was nil. Hence the race commissioners' decision to suspend the session and immediately end it early, with nine minutes left to go. It should be noted that Schumacher damaged the front wing on the curbs and that Kimni Raikkonen's other Lotus was stopped in the pits due to the need to replace the steering, as requested by the Finnish driver after completing just one lap at the start of the session. In the first free practice, all the drivers used soft tyres, the hardest available for this race. FP2 will resume at 14pm.

Lorena Bianchi

These are the FP1 times:

Pos Driver Team Time Laps 1. Fernando Alonso Ferrari 1m16.265s 22 2. Romain Grosjean Lotus-Renault 1m16.630s + 0,365 17 3. Sergio Perez Sauber-Ferrari 1m16.711s + 0,446 19 4. Lewis Hamilton McLaren-Mercedes 1m16.747s + 0,482 12 5. Pastor Maldonado Williams-Renault 1m16.760s + 0,495 20 6. Felipe Massa Ferrari 1m16.843s + 0,578 19 7. Kamui Kobayashi Sauber-Ferrari 1m17.038s + 0,773 21 8. Jenson Button McLaren-Mercedes 1m17.190 0,925s + 13 9 1. Sebastian Vettel Red Bull-Renault 17.222m0,957s + 14 10 1. Nico Rosberg Mercedes 17.261m0,996s + 18 11 1. Michael Schumacher Mercedes 17.413m1,148s + 14 12 1. Nico Hulkenberg Force India-Mercedes 17.631m1,366s + 18 13 1. Mark Webber Red Bull-Renault 18.106m1,841s + 14 14 1. Jean-Eric Vergne Toro Rosso-Ferrari 18.209m1,944s + 25 15 1. Daniel Ricciardo Toro Rosso-Ferrari 18.252m1,987s + 28 16 1. Paul di Resta Force India-Mercedes 18.302m2,037s + 16 17 1. Bruno Senna Williams-Renault 18.617m2,352s + 20 18 1. Heikki Kovalainen Caterham-Renault 19.03m2,774 $ s + 20 19 1. Vitaly Petrov Caterham-Renault 19.341m3,076 16s + 20 1 20.838. Narain Karthikeyan HRT-Cosworth 4,573m26s + 21 1 20.895. Charles Pic Marussia-Cosworth 4,630m18s + 22 1 21.638. Timo Glock Marussia-Cosworth 5,373m9s + 23 1 22.423. Pedro de la Rosa HRT- Cosworth 6,158m15s + 24 1 XNUMX. Kimi Raikkonen Lotus-Renault XNUMX