- Monaco Grand Prix - FP1
Hamilton tops Rosberg in first practice
Lewis Hamilton topped the first practice session of the Monaco Grand Prix weekend, just beating Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg to the fastest time by 0.032s.
Hamilton's best effort of 1:18.271 was set using soft tyres, which all drivers were limited to in FP1 ahead of the afternoon session when the cars should go faster on the super-soft tyres. Daniel Ricciardo was third fastest for Red Bull, with a promising time just 0.2s shy of the Mercedes and was on a quicker lap towards the end of the session before hitting traffic in the second and third sectors.
Fernando Alonso set the fourth fastest time with a 1:18.930, but proved that even the top drivers are not immune to errors as he locked up and ran wide at Mirabeau. Alonso was the third driver to make a mistake at Mirabeau after Max Chilton spun there on his eighth lap and brought an early end to his session and Adrian Sutil locked up and smacked the wall with his left rear on his 19th lap of the morning. Esteban Gutierrez also made an error in his Sauber at Turn 1, running straight on at Sainte Devote, avoiding contact with the wall but failing to recover back to the track.
Sebastian Vettel was fifth fastest in the second Red Bull ahead of Kimi Raikkonen, who was over a second off Hamilton's best time. Valtteri Bottas was seventh fastest in the Williams ahead of Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hulkenberg who rounded off the top ten.
The two Lotuses of Romain Grosjean and Pastor Maldonado could only manage 13th and 14th ahead of Jean-Eric Vergne and Felipe Massa. On his first outing on a street circuit, Daniil Kvyat completed 37 laps and set the 18th fastest time.
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