Monaco Grand Prix: FP1 review

For the 71st in the history of the sport, the streets of Monaco were set ablaze by the deafening sounds of V10s. Stretched around the 3.3 km Circuit de Monte Carlo, the French Riviera will hear nothing as wild as this, I can guarantee.

Formula 1 has entered its most glamorous event and, this week, another driver will have the opportunity to call himself a winner of the Monaco Grand Prix. The prestige in this race is way beyond what words can express and it all begins with a steady performance from the practice session upto the waving of the chequered flag on Sunday evening.

Considering the form that they’ve been in in the last couple of races, Mercedes were the favourites. Last year, they grabbed pole position with seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher, but were sadly stripped of it following the German’s three-place grid penalty for a collision he had caused in the previous race.

This year’s practice started well with the teams in the lower half of the points tables taking to the circuit. Esteban Gutierrez was amongst the first to head out and put in some decent yet consistent lap teams which gave the Sauber huge amounts of data for them to work on for the rest of the weekend.

The Mexican was followed by his compatriot, Sergio Perez, who has had a difficult time settling into Mclaren. The former Sauber driver headed out and took the lead from the rest of the lower teams. He stayed out on track for a while and welcomed team-mate Jenson Button. The Brit took over the lead and demonstrated some of the new minor upgrades the team brought in, but his timing was no where close to the kind of lap times that would follow.

Ferrari and Mercedes headed out and stormed the timing board beating the likes of Red Bull and Mclaren with ease. Nico Rosberg, winner of two pole positions this season, brought the car across the line in staggering time, especially considering that it was just his first lap after the warm up. Lewis Hamilton followed suit and recorded a time slower than his team-mates, but good enough to beat everyone else. Felipe Massa was on a roll continuously, dominating the second sector by almost 0.5 seconds over others.

Fernando Alonso then came in with a better lap than his Brazilian team-mate. During all this, both the Silver Arrows were back into the pits. Both of them soon exited the lane and got back to track to set the fastest and second fastest times: Rosberg and Hamilton, respectively.

During this time, Lotus driver Romain Grosjean was setting decent times as well, but as the asphalt inherited more rubber, the Frenchman seemed to get faster and faster comparing and almost beating the times set by the Ferraris.

Raikkonen was struggling with minor issues with his car and never really looked dangerous. Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel shared the same issue. Force India drivers were decent, whereas the Saubers began to complain about oversteering problems towards the end of the session.

That pretty much completed all the major events in FP1 at Monaco.

Final times:

Nico Rosberg (Mercedes) : 1.16.195Fernando Alonso (Ferrari) : 1.16.282

Romain Grosjean (Lotus) : 1.16.380Felipe Massa (Ferrari) : 1.16.394

Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) : 1.16.469Pastor Maldonado (Williams) : 1.16.993

Mark Webber (Red Bull) : 1.17.020Jenson Button (Mclaren) : 1.17.129

Sergio Perez (Mclaren) : 1.17.378Sebastian Vettel (Red Bull) : 1.17.380