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Water is
always a feature at the Monaco Grand Prix, with the
Mediterranean sea framing one side of the track and the
Swimming Pool chicane being one of its most famous
corners, but yesterday the water fell from the skies.
The first free practice session yesterday morning was run in
the dry, although as usual on a street circuit the track
surface was greasy and dusty, so not too many laps were
completed by the 24 drivers. Then, in the afternoon, the
traditional time for upping the pace, evaluating tyres
and generally getting to terms with the unique
challenges of racing centimetres from the barriers, a
light shower put paid to everyone’s plans.
Nevertheless, the Scuderia Ferrari duo of Fernando
Alonso and Felipe Massa were relatively satisfied with
their day’s work and, with the usual proviso that free
practice times don’t mean much, the two men were in the
top six on the time sheet in both sessions. Fernando,
quickest on Thursday morning, when he rattled off 22 laps at
the wheel of the F2012, then did a further 23 in the
afternoon, ending yesterday fourth fastest. Felipe Massa
settled for just 19 laps in FP1, going sixth fastest,
but in the afternoon, he finished one place ahead of his
team-mate, doing 21 laps. Pirelli has brought the Soft
and Supersoft tyres, the latter making its first
appearance of the season, or not in the case of the two
Ferrari men: normally the tyre comparison would have
taken place in the afternoon, but the rain scotched
those plans, as Softs and Intermediates were the only
appropriate choice when Fernando and Felipe were on
track. Jenson Button did manage to pop out on the
Supersoft when track conditions were suitable and this
contributed to the McLaren man setting the fastest time
of the day, the only driver to go under the 1m 16s
barrier. He was followed by the Lotus of Romain Grosjean,
while behind Felipe and Fernando was the winner from two
weeks ago in Spain, Pastor Maldonaldo, fifth in the
Williams, with Nico Rosberg completing the top six for
Mercedes.
This being Monaco, today is officially a “day off”
for the Formula 1 circus. That name might have been true
many years ago, but in the high pressure world of modern
grand prix racing, the Scuderia and the other eleven
teams will be on duty, with engineers and drivers
studying all the data in an effort to compensate for
today’s lack of track time, prior to a final hour of
free practice and qualifying tomorrow.
Fernando Alonso: “For we drivers,
Thursday in Monaco provides the best opportunity to
reacquaint ourselves with a very unique track. The more
you go round, the more you gain confidence and the
harder you can push to bring the lap time down. This
morning, we were able to get through our planned
programme without any trouble, but in the afternoon, the
rain came to spoil our plans and those of the others
too. We weren’t able to even fit the Supersoft and only
Button was able to find the right window to make the
most of the Option, which is how he set the fastest
time. Now, we must see what the weather will be like on
Saturday morning: if it turns out to be dry then maybe
we will do more laps than usual, but even if it rains we
will have to do work aimed at the race. In fact, it’s
not as though we understood much more when on the
Intermediates, given that the track was only damp in
places and so it wasn’t very representative. We can’t
control the weather, we can only adapt to it as it
changes. As for the car, I would say the first
impressions are quite positive: everything seems to
respond as we would expect. We only made a few small
modifications to the set-up, trying to improve it, but
it’s obviously too early to draw any conclusions. Let’s
say the weekend has got off on the right foot for us:
now we must try and keep going down this path.”
Felipe Massa: “We weren’t able to do as
much running as we would have liked because of the light
rain that fell this afternoon, but all the same, I am
happy with the way things went on this Monaco Thursday.
The car seemed to me to be okay right from the start of
the first session, with a good balance in all conditions
and with slightly better traction than we had expected.
Even when we ran the Intermediates in the final part of
the second session, the feeling was still positive. As
for the tyres, we didn’t even fit the Supersoft,
therefore we can’t say anything about their behaviour,
while the Softs worked well, also in terms of their
degradation. Sure, there is still plenty of work to do
to fine tune all the set-up details, but we have an
extra day to think about what to do to improve in this
area. It’s hard to make predictions about qualifying
and, even more so for the race, but definitely we can
say the first day of free practice can be considered a
positive one.”
Pat Fry: “The rain upset our programme
a bit in the second session, preventing us from getting
through the usual FP2 work, centred on a comparison of
the two types of tyre brought here by Pirelli. This
morning, we worked mainly on the set-up of the car,
which has no significant new parts apart from the usual
adjustments typically required for this track. In the
afternoon, we actually wanted to try both tyres over a
short and a long run, but we didn’t even manage a single
lap on the Supersoft. In the end, we used a set of
Intermediates with both drivers but, even in this case,
the track conditions were not exactly ideal for this
tyre. The same applied to almost everyone, therefore
relatively speaking, we are not at any disadvantage.
Clearly, we have less data available with which to
define the best strategy for Sunday’s race: a bit more
improvisation will be called for and we will need to be
even more ready to react to every eventuality. We have
no had any problems of any sort on both cars, which is
always positive on a track like this.”
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