Monaco, 22 May

The microclimate created by the mountains that look down on the Principality did their worst today, delivering rain shortly before the start of the second free practice session. At the one circuit on the calendar where lots of laps are a feature of every driver’s programme, this didn’t help. However, the fears expressed in the media that the lack of grip from the 2014 cars compared to their predecessors would see a high number of cars crashing into the unforgiving barriers proved to be unfounded.
In the Scuderia Ferrari camp, the only technical glitch affected Kimi Raikkonen’s F14 T, which suffered from a gearbox problem. As it occurred in the afternoon, when no one did much running because the track was damp, the Finn did not lose out so much compared to his colleagues, with many drivers only completing under ten laps. Over the course of the three hours of Thursday track time, the Ferrari duo completed 81 laps of the street circuit, with Fernando Alonso doing the lion’s share of 46.
Friday times mean little, even on a Thursday!, but perhaps on a circuit where the ability of the driver is known to count for more than usual, the fact Fernando was fastest this afternoon is not just happenstance. In fact, the top of the time sheet was quite different to usual come the end of the day. While Lewis Hamilton in the Mercedes and Sebastian Vettel in the Red Bull were second and third, behind them we find Jean-Eric Vergne in the Toro Rosso followed by Valtteri Bottas for Williams, wth Sergio Perez completing the top six on a Force India. In the past, Friday at Monaco was a genuine holiday, but since the advent of telemetry, it simply means the engineers have more time to study data before passing the set-up sheet to the garage for the cars to be prepared for Saturday’s track action.