Monaco, 22 May

Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa occupy the second row of a "virtual" grid at the end of the first two free practice sessions, held as usual at Monaco on a Thursday. The Finn and the Brazilian ended the day in third and fourth places respectively, while McLaren-Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton was quickest, ahead of the Williams-Toyota of Nico Rosberg. In fifth place was the second McLaren of Heikki Kovalainen with Robert Kubica sixth for BMW-Sauber. Last year's Monaco winner, Fernando Alonso posted the seventh best time despite removing his rear wing after a collision with the ever present barriers. In fact, by Monaco standards, most of the drivers seemed to be on best behaviour today, with not too many red flags required, although one came out to stop the morning session when a drain cover in the track surface came loose and had to be refixed into place.

At some circuits, the drivers complete a certain number of laps to get their work done and then spare the car for the rest of the weekend, but here in the Principality, where of course there is never any testing because the race is run on public roads, everyone goes for maximum track time, and between them the two Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro drivers racked up an amazing 131 laps, Kimi doing just ten laps short of Sunday's 78 lap race distance.

The general consensus is that the Prancing Horse is definitely in better shape than it was here twelve months ago, even if a familiar problem of getting soft tyres to perform instantly for a quick lap is still causing some head-scratching for the Scuderia's engineers. But one advantage of the strange Monaco timetable, with track action taking place on Thursday and Saturday, is that the team now has tonight and all of Friday to work on the cars and come up with a plan to improve the situation. Another unique Monaco tradition that takes place tonight is a dinner for the entire team on a beautiful yacht in the harbour, hosted by the Scuderia's long term partner, Philip Morris.