Bridgestone's soft tyre proved to be the fastest rubber at the high speed and historic motor sports destination of Monza for the first day of the Italian Grand Prix. Under glorious blue skies Force India driver Adrian Sutil set a 1min 23.924secs time in the afternoon practice session.

Vodafone McLaren Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton was the fastest in the morning session, using the medium compound to set a time of 1min 23.936secs. In this session only Giancarlo Fisichella in his Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro debut made use of the soft compound tyre, with all other competitors only using the medium compound.

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

What was significant about today's running?
"Today was interesting as this was the first time that we have run in Monza this season. Historically, there would be a test here before the race weekend, so today was the first time that the teams have used their special low drag and lower downforce Monza configurations. Additionally, the revised kerbs have changed the nature of the lap, so this was another factor to consider today. Despite this, lap times were once more very close, with the top twelve cars this afternoon separated by a second."

How do you expect this allocation to work over the weekend?
"It is still too early for us to make strong predictions. The track is still improving and there were many different chassis set-ups and aerodynamic configurations used today which makes tyre comparison difficult. What we can say is that both compounds have worked well today. We haven't seen any graining and there were no other particular tyre issues. As the times are so close the smallest mistake by a driver or in car set-up will make a big difference in qualifying tomorrow."

Stats of the Day:
Practice One 10:00 - 11:30: 
Driver 		   Team			Time 	    Tyre 
Lewis Hamilton     Vodafone McLaren	1m 23.936s  M
Heikki Kovalainen  Vodafone McLaren	1m 24.332s  M
Adrian Sutil 	   Force India F1 Team  1m 24.471s  M 

Practice Two 14:00 - 15:30
Driver 		Team			Time 	    Tyre
Adrian Sutil 	Force India F1 Team 	1m 23.924s  S
Romain Grosjean ING Renault F1 Team 	1m 24.163s  S
Fernando Alonso ING Renault F1 Team 	1m 24.297s  S

Compounds used: Medium / Soft / Intermediate / Wet

Temperatures 	 Ambient   Track    	Weather
AM - Practice 1  23C-25C   30C-33C 	Sunny
PM - Practice 2  28C-29C   38C-40C-38C  Sunny