Bridgestone's soft tyre took Red Bull Racing's Sebastian Vettel to the fastest time of the day under glorious blue skies at the Autodromo Monza for the first day of the Italian Grand Prix.

Vettel set a 1m 22.839secs time in the afternoon session. Reigning world champion Jenson Button (Vodafone McLaren Mercedes) was fastest in the morning, using the hard compound Bridgestone Potenza.

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

What was significant about today's running?
"As we would expect, the circuit started quite dirty and slippery, and there was particular lack of grip on the newer surface of turns one and two. We saw gradual improvement in the surface through both sessions. The first session was very busy, with teams trying many configurations and set-ups. The second session saw refinements of the lessons learnt in the morning."

How do you expect this allocation to work over the weekend?
"So far we do not have a lot of comparable data due to the different approaches taken by the teams today. The fastest times today were set in the afternoon on the soft tyres, however the track improvement affects this so we cannot read too much into that. I think tomorrow's practice session will be very illustrative and qualifying should be very exciting."

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Stats of the Day:
Practice One 10:00 - 11:30: 
Driver 		   Team			Time 	    Tyre 
Jenson Button 	   Vodafone McLaren 	1m 23.693s  H
Sebastian Vettel   Red Bull Racing 	1m 23.790s  H
Lewis Hamilton 	   Vodafone McLaren 	1m 23.967s  H
 

Practice Two 14:00 - 15:30
Driver 		   Team			Time 	    Tyre
Sebastian Vettel   Red Bull Racing 	1m 22.839s  S
Fernando Alonso    Scuderia Ferrari 	1m 22.915s  S
Felipe Massa 	   Scuderia Ferrari 	1m 23.061s  S

Compounds used: Hard (prime) / Soft (option)

Temperatures 	 Ambient  Track   	Weather
AM - Practice 1  18C-22C  25C-31C 	Sunny
PM - Practice 2  24C-26C  35C-37C 	Sunny