Kubica shows Renault potential in Monaco (Practice one interactive chart)

Posted on

| Written by

Robert Kubica was on the pace in first practice this morning

Robert Kubica gave Renault some encouragement with the third-fastest time in practice at Monaco this morning, less than one tenth of a second slower than Fernando Alonso in the Ferrari.

Practice times are especially difficult to interpret at Monaco due to traffic and the ever-improving track surface. Take a closer look at who did what during the first session with the interactive chart below.

You need to upgrade your Flash Player

View interactive chart fullscreen

Kubica set his best time just over a quarter of an hour after Alonso did his, and so will have benefitted from a slightly grippier track surface. Most encouragingly for Renault, he did it around the same time Vettel posted his best lap, just 16 thousandths of a second better than Kubica’s.

The McLarens, as usual, did more running early in the session. That will partly explain why they are further down the time sheets – but it may also be a reflection of the MP4-25s weakness on circuits with lots of slow corners. Hamilton and Button were close to Massa on pace when all three were out on the track together.

Of course the big unknown here is fuel loads. But a lot of the changes we can see here – a resurgent Ferrari, McLaren now quite there, and Kubica unlocking the best from the R30 – are consistent with what we expected before the race.

For the Monaco rookies, these sessions are about getting in as many laps as possible. Jaime Alguersuari was the first driver out to set times and did 37 in the 90 minute session, while Nico Hulkenberg and Vitaly Petrov each completed 39.

The headline times shows Timo Glock in the updated Virgin just one second off Kamui Kobayashi in the Sauber. And Heikki Kovalainen was within a tenth of Glock.

There are a few reasons why the new teams should be closer to the front runners on pure lap time this weekend. It’s a short, and one where engine performance is not as critical as at other circuits. We saw significant developments on the Lotus and Virgin cars last week.

But again, track evolution will have played a role – Kobayashi set his best lap time over half an hour before Glock did his. We’ll get a better idea of where they stand when we see their long runs in FP2 this afternoon.

So far it looks like the HRTs and Lucas di Grassi in the old specification VR-01 would struggle to win a GP2 race here. As I write Pastor Maldonado’s best time in GP2 practice is a tenth quicker than di Grassi’s, and a whole second up on the HRT pair.

2010 Monaco Grand Prix

    Browse all 2010 Monaco Grand Prix articles

    Author information

    Keith Collantine
    Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

    Got a potential story, tip or enquiry? Find out more about RaceFans and contact us here.

    8 comments on “Kubica shows Renault potential in Monaco (Practice one interactive chart)”

    1. is there any way to see what tires have been used? surely the mclarens and mercedes haven’t used the softs? massa too

      1. Ordinarily most drivers use just one set of prime compound tyres (medium this weekend) in FP1.

    2. whats interesting is that you can see where laps where posted with less traffic on the track i.e alonso whereas Vettel seemed to have more cars on track when he did his time? (just using the graph had no vision)

    3. I think the times of the McLarens as well as Massa’s times have a lot to do with being set early.

      Chandhok was not doing too bad, he was improving his laps fast and running only about 1.5 seconds slower than Liuzzi before hitting the barriers.

      Interesting to see, Glock has the most constant times of the new team drivers, followed by Heikki. Trulli is not very consistant.
      Overall the rookies were doing a second or more slower than their more experienced team mates, so that might count for the last 3 cars being slower than GP2.

    4. Keith, is there any way you could include a “turn on/off all” button on the interactive charts in the future? It just pains to deselect 22 drivers separately when you just want to compare McLaren (for example) team-mates.

      1. At the moment, no, but I’ll keep it in mind.

    5. Prisoner Monkeys
      13th May 2010, 13:18

      I’m willing to bet that McLaren, Renault and Ferrari are all running light to send Red Bull a message. It’s exactly what I’d do in their position.

    6. Maybe that cheeky pound a put on Kubica was not so silly after all at 30/1. He has been driving brilliantly this weekend, Massa must be worried…

    Comments are closed.