Monaco Grand Prix 2013: Rosberg and Hamilton top practice

Monaco Grand Prix 2013: Mercedes duo Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton set the pace in practice for Sunday's race

By The Sport Review
Thursday 23 May 2013, 16:24 UK

Nico Rosberg was quickest in practice Photo: Mercedes AMG Petronas

Mercedes duo Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton set the pace in the first two free practice sessions ahead of Sunday’s Monaco Grand Prix.

The German was 0.318 seconds quicker than Hamilton as the Mercedes pair impressed ahead of qualifying at the street circuit on Saturday.

Fernando Alonso was third-fastest, 0.437 seconds behind Rosberg and 0.082 seconds ahead of his Ferrari team-mate Felipe Massa.

Defending world champion Sebastian Vettel ended up ninth-fastest accross the two sessions, behind McLaren’s Jenson Button and Lotus’ Romain Grosjean.

“It was OK,” said the Red Bull driver. “Unfortunately, we had a big change and we lost quite a bit of time in the afternoon. Not completely ideal. We’d like to be a little bit more competitive in low-fuel configuration so we need to find some more lap time there.

“My short run on super-soft was very poor. We need to understand why I wasn’t able to improve which you should be able to quite easily.

“After that we did a long run on super-soft and it seemed quite OK.”