Fernando Alonso headed the times in the second practice session in Monaco.
The Ferrari driver used the super-soft tyres to set a time of 1’15.123.
Lewis Hamilton went second fastest with just over 20 minutes left, coming within a tenth of a second of Alonso’s time.
As in the first session, Nico Rosberg was third fastest. Jenson Button was fourth in front of Sebastian Vettel.
Michael Schumacher was able to join in quite early on following his crash in the second practice session.
But Vitantonio Liuzzi never made it out of the HRT garage after damaging his car in the first session.
Paul di Resta hit trouble, stopping with a loss of drive as he came out of the tunnel.
Shortly before the end of the session Vitaly Petrov lost control of his car on the exit of the tunnel and knocked the front wing off the car.
2011 Monaco Grand Prix
Santi
26th May 2011, 14:35
Glad to see some Ferrari, McLaren and Mercedes ahead of the Red Bulls!!! It was starting to get boring :)
Looks like it might be an interesting qualifying session!
Icthyes (@icthyes)
26th May 2011, 14:38
Which we have to wait 2 days for! Noooo!
BasCB (@bascb)
26th May 2011, 14:52
Suspense …
Nas-T
26th May 2011, 15:44
why monaco has gap on friday? is there any story about that?
Icthyes
26th May 2011, 15:55
To give the residents a chance to leave town for the GP, Friday is a bank holiday.
Lee
26th May 2011, 16:29
people want to leave their homes in the millionaires playground for this…..?
Burnout (@burnout)
26th May 2011, 19:22
Somebody told me that it was because Friday is the day the weekly market is open and so historically there has been no racing in Monaco on Friday. And this practice of no racing on Friday started well before the World Championship was established.
Kiril Varbanov
26th May 2011, 14:40
I hope you are right, but I still expect the Bulls to be a lot faster when the Q comes.
Ella
26th May 2011, 14:53
Hopefully it’ll be tight! We’re in dire need of an exciting quali!
And yeah, the bulls will probably be a lot faster by the time quali rolls around but let’s hope the rest are too :)
damonsmedley (@damonsmedley)
26th May 2011, 17:05
We may be in luck. I’m sure Red Bull won’t be leaving it to chance as much as they did last weekend. This is Monaco, after all! ;)
And it’s great to see other teams beating Red Bull for a change. Whether this trend continues on Saturday remains to be seen, though.
Fixy (@)
26th May 2011, 15:21
Nice to see 8 drivers so close, but probably Red Bull weren’t pushing at their maximum.
infy
26th May 2011, 15:27
This track does not play to the Red Bulls strengths. There are no fast speed corners.
Kimster
26th May 2011, 19:13
Keith: Schumacher crashed in FP2 and still made it to start in FP2? :D
I think u mean he crashed in FP1
Stokesy
26th May 2011, 14:38
So much for HRT closing in on Virgin..
AndrewTanner (@andrewtanner)
26th May 2011, 20:21
Well it is only practise and not getting one of the cars out at all due to a driver mistake is hardly indicative of performance of the F111.
emil
26th May 2011, 14:44
I don’t know if it’s just me, but I have a feeling we are in for a classic this weekend. Imagining the chaos of the early races this year crammed into Monaco brings a smile to my face. oh ya, three day weekend (memorial day in the states) and the Indy 500, damn what a sweet life this is!
xbx-117 (@xbx-117)
26th May 2011, 19:05
Indeed, a great weekend. Monaco in the morning, Indy in the afternoon, and NASCAR in the evening. And the WRC in Argentina all weekend. Then the WSBK on Monday as well as the start to the Isle of Man TT, this is going to be an amazing 3-day weekend.
david
26th May 2011, 14:44
i hope red bull don’t find more pace in saturday ,. if stay like this qualy should be great with good battles in front
MW (@)
26th May 2011, 14:45
HRTs are 109% outside.. Looks like there’ll be 2 less obstacles to mess up the race for the front runners
Snow Donkey
26th May 2011, 14:49
I must say I grow tired of them. The only interest they bring to a gp is finding out what setting they have the suck knob turned to. 2 less obstacles indeed.
MinusTwo
26th May 2011, 15:31
“Finding out what setting they have the suck knob set to”… classic. Almost made me spit coffee at my computer screen.
Thanks for the chuckle.
Dan Thorn (@dan-thorn)
26th May 2011, 15:49
I guess in that case your opinions on Virgin are similar, considering they’ve been fairly closely matched in the last couple of races…
damonsmedley (@damonsmedley)
26th May 2011, 17:07
@Snow Donkey – Ouch! :O
Icthyes
26th May 2011, 15:56
Funny, the same thing could be said of Alonso last weekend.
MVEilenstein (@mveilenstein)
26th May 2011, 16:41
Or Schumacher in Turkey.
Honestly, the complaints about HRT are hollow, at best. They’ve been granted two places on the grid, and they’re making the best of it.
Methinks people enjoy kicking HRT around because they’re an easy target.
TrueF1Grit (@truef1grit)
26th May 2011, 17:04
The HRT’s have been expecptionally good at moving out of the way.
Unliked some other cars previously named when they were being lapped…
leeh1987
26th May 2011, 20:55
Apart from when one held up Hamilton in barcelona costing him about half a second
Lee
27th May 2011, 14:51
It is unlikely they will be on Saturday though as the top teams will likely be using the harder of the two compounds while HRT will use the softer.
Eggry (@eggry)
26th May 2011, 14:45
Good to see he’s back on fight. I hope he would harvest what he didn’t last year.
Sam
26th May 2011, 14:46
Pleeeeease let Red Bull not have any trick up their sleeve and end up destroying everyone in Qualifying. If they dont–I think Q3 is going to be such a barnstormer.
BasCB (@bascb)
26th May 2011, 14:53
Well, they still might pull out their 0.7 seconds and just get a qualifying 1-2, sadly. Wouldn’t bet against that right now.
DaveW
26th May 2011, 15:07
I’m going to watch sector 3 in FP3 times, when they might try on a qualifying run. If their afterburner will work at the slow speeds here, it will do its damage from Tabac to Rascasse. I’m holding out hope that the low speeds will moot their Q3 setting. And for the race, if they have to follow cars out of St. Devote, their heat-sensitive KERS system is going to barbecue itself very quickly.
JohnBt
26th May 2011, 14:51
Quali will be genuine this weekend. Phew, finally.
DaveW
26th May 2011, 14:55
At a circuit that is basically Gymkhana in an F1 car, who is shocked to see the times topped by Alonso, Hamilton, and Rosberg here? This is going to be good.
Raveendhana
26th May 2011, 15:14
has force india brought their new aero package to this race?
Cacarella
26th May 2011, 15:16
Does anyone know if the drivers were using the DRS to set these times?
I didn’t notice the wings opening, but I really wasn’t paying attention to it.
Eggry (@eggry)
26th May 2011, 15:19
It was barely opened. in Monaco, there’s three DRS point. main straight, up hill and tunnel. FIA banned DRS in tunnel so you only can see in main straight and up hill.
PJ Tierney
26th May 2011, 16:09
Don’t forget after the chicane.
Eggry (@eggry)
26th May 2011, 17:00
I think I didn’t saw wing opened after the chicane…maybe I missed.
pobtoon
26th May 2011, 15:26
Was just reminding myself of Kubica round Monaco last year, he was really giving it some round there. Shame he wont be doing again this year.
Icthyes
26th May 2011, 15:57
Shame he won’t finish 5th, I agree.
Todfod (@todfod)
26th May 2011, 19:39
He got a podium in an equally competitive Renault last year… so maybe the pecking order isn’t all that predicatble??
MinusTwo
26th May 2011, 16:21
Totally. His onboard laps were some seriously exciting stuff.
I think it was also looked cool because of the black and yellow car, and black and yellow gloves that made it look really awesome when he sawed the wheel back and forth. I just remember he was working so hard, putting so much into it that it was impressive to watch.
Rob
26th May 2011, 21:57
He had a much softer ride, which gave him a very good ride over the bumps. The drawback was that his tyres did not last as long as the others. So while he was competitive at the start, the end of his stints saw him going much slower than the others.
Malibu_GP
26th May 2011, 15:40
Seriously Fanatics, do We really think that RB don’t have a bit in reserve? I don’t like it, but I must face the likely outcome. A pleasant surprise is always welcome, even if if comes in the form of an Alonso domination… That just buys the Woking Boys (and LH in particular) time to gain some pace on the RB7. If Fernando takes points off Seb it could play into McLaren’s hands. Ok…, back to work!
mattr
26th May 2011, 15:54
madness!!paddy power have already payed out on vettel winning the championship.crazy!!
hutch (@hutch)
26th May 2011, 16:19
Just for fun, let’s just make this the starting order!
That I’d like to see!
Gill
26th May 2011, 16:34
Ferrari using a new front wing ,a low downforce spec one
martin bell
26th May 2011, 17:55
I got to thinking today about all the pre season talk of how confusing we would all find it having two Lotus name bearing teams on the grid. I seem to be coping alright. Not really a problem at all actually.
AndrewTanner (@andrewtanner)
26th May 2011, 20:20
Just as we get a decent stint from Petrov… BAM he walls it again, tut!
HounslowBusGarage (@hounslowbusgarage)
26th May 2011, 20:38
I think we are in for a Ferrari weekend. ALO for pole and lights-to-flag victory.
PJ Tierney
26th May 2011, 21:50
This was brought up on another site but it’s got me thinking:
Why don’t the backmarker teams build their season’s car in such a way that it will have a huge advantage at a place like Monaco? I mean, HRT are probably not going to score any points at any race this season, but if they designed their car in such a way that it was built to do REALLY well at Monaco (with a short wheelbase etc.) and it ended up being a second better than the rest of the field, wouldn’t that really impress people? You look at teams like Force India in 2009 who didn’t do all that much, but had a MONSTER performance at Spa that everybody still remembers. I’m sure “HRT wins the 2011 Monaco Grand Prix” would sound a lot better than “HRT obtains 10 points-scoring positions in 2011”
Oliver
27th May 2011, 9:15
They won’t make the 107% rule on any other track if they were to do just that.
Thh designers are hopeful when they start, but they can’t know what the opposition will come up with.
Bartholomew
27th May 2011, 14:46
I think Alonso should continue to use the gold helmet, naybe with a light metallic blue stripe.