Mat Coch writes:

The Monaco Grand Prix is one of the most anticipated of the season. The Principality’s narrow streets are amongst the most extreme tests of drivers abilities, a throwback to days gone by and a place where drivers, rather than cars, can make a difference. But with the Monte Carlo streets notoriously difficult to pass on much of the weekend is decided well before the flag falls at the end of the race on Sunday.

The weekend is expected to be cooler than opening practice, which is a glorious 21 degrees with bright blue skies. With the streets in use by regular traffic for fifty-one weeks of the year the circuit will be dusty, or 'green'. We can therefore expect long periods of inactivity once teams have their installation laps out of the way.

A number of drivers have one-off helmet designs for the weekend, Fernando Alonso among them, though the Spaniard has been in the headlines for other reasons. On Wednesday he suggested Red Bull were sore losers after the Milton Keynes squad was vocal over the Pirelli tyres. Indeed Vettel has gone as far as calling the Pirelli tyres dangerous, a comment which seems to give weight to Alonso's view.

Without sounding like a broken record much will come down to tyres. Pirelli has brought both soft and supersoft, sticking to its guns two weeks on from the Spanish Grand Prix where it was heavily criticised for high wearing tyres.
Esteban Gutierrez and teammate Nico Hulkenberg emerge on track shortly after the pit lane opens, Gutierrez one of five drivers making their Monaco F1 debuts this weekend – only Valtteri Bottas has not raced around the Monaco streets in the junior formulae.

As expected the early track action is limited to installation laps as teams perform system checks, ensuring theirs cars are running correctly after being packed away following the Spanish Grand Prix two weeks ago. It makes for a busy pit lane; the narrow confines seeing cars in a traffic jam while mechanics play Tetris in their attempts to get them in to the garage.

Ten minutes into the session and we're yet to see a timed lap, though both Sergio Perez and Jenson Button venture pass the start-finish line before returning to the pits. Indeed Perez is something of an early feature on track, presumably running early tests on McLaren's new front wing which the team was unable to do two weeks ago.

Mercedes is featuring heat sensitive cameras on its car, unusually mounted on the front wing pointing back at the front wheels. The German marque has struggled with high tyre wear in recent races, and while it's fast over a single lap it has typically faded during the race. The cameras are presumably a way for the team to view what's happening to the tyres during a stint as the Brackley squad looks for ways to improve its race performance.

Almost half an hour in to the session and the twenty-two drivers have completed just thirty-two laps between them as their teams sit it out in the garages, hoping someone else cleans the dirty track. Fernando Alonso sits reverentially on his throne in the Ferrari garage while Paul Di Resta cleans his visor and Perez chats with his engineers. The lack of cars on track matches the lack of fans in grandstands, with swathes of empty seats.

Gutierrez finally breaks the silence, accelerating out of the pitlane with almost fifty-seven minutes left of the session, encouraging Daniel Ricciardo to follow suit. The Sauber driver becomes the first to set a time with a 1:29.219, a long way off a competitive time as evidenced by Ricciardo stopping the clock almost five seconds faster shortly after.

Jean-Eric Vergne in the other Toro Rosso, this weekend sporting a Francois Cevert tribute helmet, is also on track, as is Charles Pic and Nico Hulkenberg with all circulating and gradually building their confidence.

As times tumble Ricciardo radios in to his team reporting contact with the barrier, though he continues with his long run.

At the mid-way point of the session the track is finally busy; Felipe Massa has caught and is baulked by Gutierrez while Kimi Raikkonen gives the fans a view of his James Hunt inspired helmet. But it's Massa who is fastest, a 1:17.685, followed by Button on a 1:18.976 and Ricciardo a tenth further back.

Vettel remerges from the garage as Nico Rosberg sets the fastest lap, almost seven tenths of a second up on Massa's previous best. Interestingly times are still almost a second off the pace from the same session last year.

The Williams pair of Bottas and Pastor Maldonado are running a shared programme; Maldonado using a new stepped nose while Bottas – who has a camera mounted inside his helmet for the session – is running the standard nose as the team desperately seeks its first points of the year.