Free Practice 2 GP: Hamilton Tops the Charts

Lewis Hamilton dominated this second practice session of the day. Free Practice 1 and 2 took place on Thursday instead of Friday, a Monaco exclusive…

The McLaren driver was in the lead for almost the entire session, with Nico Rosberg in the Williams offering some challenge to the British dominance when his soft tires were performing well mid-session.

The German stayed ahead for only ten minutes before Hamilton also noticed the improvement in his Bridgestone tires. He then set a time of 1’15”140, ahead of the Williams by just under four-tenths of a second.

Rosberg managed to hold onto second place despite being under immense pressure, with the Ferrari duo in third and fourth, with Kimi Räikkönen ahead of Felipe Massa. Heikki Kovalainen eventually finished fifth in the second McLaren.

The two Renaults were victims of almost identical incidents at Sainte Dévote. First, Nelson Piquet crashed into the barriers, breaking his rear wing, then his teammate Fernando Alonso lost control of his car at the same spot 12 minutes later. Unlike Piquet, Alonso managed to keep his car on the track but, while sliding, he damaged his suspensions and rear wings.

Although he successfully managed to bring the Renault back to the pits, Alonso left a lot of debris on the track, which required a red flag intervention for four minutes to restore order!

While several other drivers cut chicanes, the two other major incidents involved Jarno Trulli and Adrian Sutil. The Toyota driver barely scraped the wall exiting the swimming pool, while Sutil lost his front wing at the Rascasse in the final minutes.

Despite his accident, Alonso managed to renew his seventh place achieved in the morning, just behind Robert Kubica’s BMW.

The two Hondas take eighth and tenth places, Jenson Button was faster than Barrichello by 0.067 seconds. Kazuki Nakajima is the driver who came between the Japan-originated cars.

Results of Free Practice 2 – 2008 Monaco GP