Nico Rosberg topped the timing sheets in Free Practice 1 of the Monaco Grand Prix.

On a sunny and warm Thursday in Monaco Merdeces’ Nico Rosberg was the fastest with a 1:16.195. Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso was second only 0.087s off the pace with a 1:16.282. Felipe Massa put his Ferrari in 4th with a 1:16.394. Lewis Hamilton could only manage 5th. The surprise was Williams’ Pastor Maldonado in 6th. The two Red Bulls of Vettel and Webber were 9th and 7th respectively. Lotus’ Kimi Raikkonen could only manage 13th.  His team mate, in the other Lotus, Romain Grosjean, finished in 3rd.

As we all know from Free Practice, these times are not representative of the absolute pace of the cars. We only get to know that during qualifying and to some extent in FP3.

We’ll be back again for Free Practice 2 at 14:00. As always you can follow us on Twitter at @F1_Madness for live updates.