During yesterday's opening two practice sessions in Monte Carlo Kimi Raikkonen got closest to unlocking the Ferrari F2007’s potential on the narrow streets with the second-fastest time as the Scuderia made a solid start to the proceedings. In Monaco the usual two Friday F1 practice sessions take place on the Thursday with a full day's break (today) in proceedings before final practice and qualifying sessions get underway on Saturday.

And while Raikkonen posted a 1m 16.215s, Felipe Massa struggled a little as he got held up by traffic when running on new tyres in the afternoon. Over the long run the team were satisfied to have completed the day’s job list and are reasonably confident they have found a decent chassis set-up.

Meanwhile Fernando Alonso ended the opening day of the Monaco Grand Prix meeting fastest for McLaren (1m 15.940s), team mate Lewis Hamilton was left in third place (1m 16.296) rueing his first serious mistake since he started racing for the team. “I had a very small braking error coming into Ste Devote,” Hamilton explained, “and the tyres hadn’t built up enough grip so I made a tiny mistake, and the back of the car slipped a little and that was it. There is just no room for error in Monaco. His MP4-22 will require a significant rebuild, but otherwise the team were happy with their progress thus far and Alonso in particular was quite satisfied with his day’s work.

Kimi Raikkonen: "I am reasonably happy with how things went in free practice today. We have found a good balance on the car right from the morning session and we have completed all the programme we had planned for the day. As usual, it is too early to draw conclusions as to how the rest of the weekend will go, because we don't know what our closest rivals have done and also because the track conditions change a lot from Thursday to Saturday. All in all, a good start to the weekend."
 

Felipe Massa: "I didn't manage to exploit all the car's potential, partly because I always had traffic when I was running in the second session with new tyres. Unfortunately, on this special track, traffic can cost you an awful lot of time. Over a long run, the situation seems good, but we still have work to do on finding the right balance of the car and that includes also on the first lap on new tyres. All the same, I am confident."

Luca Baldisserri: "As always, it is difficult to judge the result of free practice, because there are too many unknown factors in our main rivals' work programme, as outright performance can be compromised by traffic on the track. As for ourselves, we can say we achieved everything we had put on the day's job list, without any particular problems. We worked on finding the best set-up on the car for Sunday's race and on the comparison between the two types of tyre on offer from Bridgestone. From what we have seen today, the choice seems less evident than usual. In the light of these three hours of practice, we think we will be competitive both in qualifying and in the race."

Free practice - First session: K. Raikkonen 5th 1.17.918 28 262; F. Massa 8th 1.18.189 29 260; Weather: air temperature 26/29 °C, track; temperature 33/40 °C, sunny; Free Practice - Second session: K. Raikkonen 2nd 1.16.215 43 262; F. Massa 6th 1.16.784 37 260; Weather: air temperature 28 °C, track; temperature 42/45 °C, sunny.