Formula One news

Alonso stays top

McLaren's Fernando Alonso remained top in the second practice session for the Monaco Grand Prix. The Spaniard set a best time of 1:15.940s, over a second faster than his pace-setting time from first practice. Three tenths of a second adrift was second fastest Kimi Raikkonen in the Ferrari, whilst Lewis Hamilton was just behind in third place despite a big crash cutting his running time short.

Jarno Trulli and Giancarlo Fisichella both set late fast laps to sneak into fourth and fifth places respectively with Felipe Massa rounding off the the top six. Robert Kubica, who was provisional fastest for much of the session, ended up seventh for BMW ahead of Nico Rosberg, Mark Webber and David Coulthard, meaning that both Red Bull cars made into the top ten, whilst only completing 16 laps. Rubens Barrichello and Jenson Button showed signs of improvement with eleventh and twelfth places respectively whilst BMW's Nick Heidfeld, Renault's Heikki Kovalainen and Toyota's Ralf Schumacher will be disappointed with 14th, 17th and 20th respectively having seen their team-mates making the top ten.

The session was however marred by accidents. The first came after 50 minutes when David Coulthard kerbed his Red Bull on the approach to the Grand Hotel Hairpin causing his rear tyres to clash into the barrier as the back end came round. Three minutes later Anthony Davidson's session was over when he crashed his Super Aguri after losing the rear end at Ste Devote. Then a third Brit crashed and this time it was Lewis Hamilton to make a mistake. Carrying too much speed into Ste Devote, the McLaren driver failed to correct the understeer and went straight into the barrier. At his favourite track it marked his first crash of the season and cut his running time to just 19 laps, below half of the average amounts completed by the field. His session ended only for the whole session to come to an end when another rookie with a strong record at Monaco, Adrian Sutil, had a major shunt at Portier, destroying the whole left side of his Spyker. Running resumed five minutes later.

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