Bridgestone's super soft tyre took Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro driver Fernando Alonso to the fastest time in the variable weather conditions of the opening day of the Monaco Grand Prix.

Alonso set a time of 1m 14.904secs in the afternoon practice session, leaving him fastest from Mercedes GP Petronas F1 Team driver Nico Rosberg, with Red Bull Racing's Sebastian Vettel third quickest. Alonso was also fastest in the morning practice session, using the medium compound Bridgestone Potenza.

Q&A with Hirohide Hamashima - Bridgestone Director of Motorsport Tyre Development

What was significant about today's running?
"Today we had good weather conditions in the morning and at the start of the afternoon practice session, however after that it became cooler and light rain fell on the track. In the morning the warm-up of the medium compound was quite good for this circuit and the track was showing good improvement before the rain started falling. I am happy that we were able to show that the allocation of the medium and super soft gave very reasonable performance today."

How do you expect this allocation to work over the weekend?
"This is a particularly difficult question here as it is a challenge to predict the track condition as there is no F1 running tomorrow and we don't know what the weather will do. Initial conclusions from the data is that the super soft tyre should be able to last a reasonable distance if used at the start of the race, and the medium compound will deliver strong performance once it is warmed up. However, the track condition and weather have been very variable so far this week so we really face many unknowns."

More F1 News from Bridgestone Motorsport

Stats of the Day:
Practice One 10:00 - 11:30: 
Driver 		   Team			Time 	    Tyre 
Fernando Alonso    Scuderia Ferrari	1m 15.927s  M
Sebastian Vettel   Red Bull Racing 	1m 16.000s  M
Robert Kubica 	   Renault F1 Team 	1m 16.016s  M 

Practice Two 14:00 - 15:30
Driver 		   Team			Time 	    Tyre
Fernando Alonso    Scuderia Ferrari	1m 14.904s  SS
Nico Rosberg 	   Mercedes GP F1 Team  1m 15.013s  SS
Sebastian Vettel   Red Bull Racing 	1m 15.099s  SS

Compounds used: Medium / Super Soft

Temperatures 	 Ambient  Track    Weather
AM - Practice 1  21C 	  28C-32C  Sunny
PM - Practice 2  22C-19C  41C-27C  Sunny/Partly cloudy/Drizzle