Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFormula 1

Hamilton tops rain-interrupted FP2 in Monaco

Lewis Hamilton set the fastest time of FP2 for the Monaco Grand Prix as heavy rain interrupted running.

The Mercedes pair of Hamilton and Nico Rosberg topped the times after 20 minutes of the session, with Hamilton fastest on a 1:17.192. At that point, Roberto Merhi hit the wall exiting the tunnel to bring out a red flag.

Merhi lost control of his Manor under braking for the Nouvelle Chicane, attempting to catch the rear as it stepped out but over-correcting to spear in to the barrier on the outside of the track, breaking the front wing before a second impact also appeared to damage the front right suspension.

The incident brought out the red flag while the car was recovered and the debris cleared, and during that break the rain started to fall. Pastor Maldonado bizarrely attempted a lap on supersoft tyres but found the track too wet and then the rain intensified to confine everyone to their garages.

The heavy rain eventually stopped to allow running on wet or intermediate tyres in the final 15 minutes of the session, with a threat of rain on Sunday making some wet running useful for the teams.

Despite the tricky conditions, the closing stages of the session passed largely without incident, with Daniil Kvyat the only man to go off as he made use of the escape road at Ste Devote having failed to get his Red Bull slowed sufficiently for the first corner.

Due to the rain the times from the first 20 minutes therefore went unbeaten, with Hamilton heading Rosberg by three quarters of a second. Sebastian Vettel was third - 1.1s slower than Hamilton - with team-mate Kimi Raikkonen another 0.2s further back in fourth place.

Kvyat was fifth for Red Bull - 0.005s off Raikkonen's time - ahead of the impressive Toro Rosso pair of Carlos Sainz and Max Verstappen. Fernando Alonso finished the session in the top ten ahead of Nico Hulkenberg and Romain Grosjean.

Aside from Merhi's incident, Marcus Ericsson also hit trouble as the team kept him in the garage throught the session as it investigated what it simply described as a mechanical issue.

Click here for a look at the technical updates brought by all the teams at the start of the European season

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Pos	Driver	Team	Time	Laps
01	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1:17.192	12
02	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1:17.932	15
03	Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	1:18.295	14
04	Kimi Raikkonen	Ferrari	1:18.543	15
05	Daniil Kvyat	Red Bull	1:18.548	16
06	Carlos Sainz	Toro Rosso	1:18.659	14
07	Max Verstappen	Toro Rosso	1:18.782	12
08	Fernando Alonso	McLaren	1:18.906	18
09	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India	1:19.151	13
10	Romain Grosjean	Lotus	1:19.266	13
11	Sergio Perez	Force India	1:19.300	13
12	Felipe Massa	Williams	1:19.560	15
13	Valtteri Bottas	Williams	1:19.566	14
14	Pastor Maldonado	Lotus	1:19.577	13
15	Jenson Button	McLaren	1:19.606	14
16	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull	1:19.639	13
17	Felipe Nasr	Sauber	1:20.263	10
18	Roberto Merhi	Manor	1:22.017	9
19	Will Stevens	Manor	1:22.943	13
20	Marcus Ericsson	Sauber		0

Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.