Practice One - Brawn lead Ferrari and McLaren in Monaco 21 May 2009
Brawn GP’s Rubens Barrichello led the way after the first hour and a half of practice in Monaco on Thursday morning. And, amazingly, there were only two minor incidents, when the Brazilian and McLaren’s Heikki Kovalainen, on separate occasions, got into an oversteer twitch entering Ste Devote and took the safe option of a trip down the escape road. Nobody even so much as dislodged a front wing.
Barrichello’s lap of 1m 17.189s compares to Felipe Massa’s 2008 pole time of 1m 15.787s, which will certainly be challenged as more rubber goes down. Massa continued the Brazilian theme with second place for Ferrari with a lap of 1m 17.499s.
It was a good morning for McLaren, too, with Lewis Hamilton and Kovalainen taking third and fourth with 1m 17.578s and 1m 17.686s. Kimi Raikkonen was right with them in the second Ferrari on 1m 17.839s.
Kazuki Nakajima was sixth for Williams with 1m 18.000s, heading team mate Nico Rosberg on 1m 18.024s and points leader Jenson Button on 1m 18.080s. Then came Fernando Alonso for Renault on 1m 18.283s and Mark Webber for Red Bull rounding out the top 10 with 1m 18.348s.
Webber’s team mate Sebastian Vettel was only 13th, on 1m 19.233s, after suffering a suspected engine failure partway through the session.
Sebastien Buemi used his Monaco knowledge to take 11th place for Toro Rosso in 1m 18.695s ahead of fellow GP2 graduate Nelson Piquet on 1m 19.204s for Renault.
Behind Vettel, Sebastien Bourdais lapped his Toro Rosso in 1m 19.255s, chased by Force India’s Giancarlo Fisichella (1m 19.534s), the BMW Saubers of Robert Kubica and Nick Hiedfeld (1m 19.560s and 1m 19.579s), Adrian Sutil (1m 19.600s) in the second Force India, and the Toyotas of Timo Glock and Jarno Trulli (1m 19.698s and 1m 19.831s).
