Raikkonen leads Ferrari at Monaco

Kimi Raikkonen led the Ferrari charge at Monaco on Thursday finishing the day's free practice second fastest overall while team mate Felipe Massa was sixth quickest.

"I am reasonably happy with how things went in free practice today," Raikkonen said. "We have found a good balance on the car right from the morning session and we have completed all the programme we had planned for the day. As usual, it is too early to draw conclusions as to how the rest of the weekend will go, because we don't know what our closest rivals have done and also because the track conditions change a lot from Thursday to Saturday. All in all, a good start to the weekend."

Felipe Massa commented, "I didn't manage to exploit all the car's potential, partly because I always had traffic when I was running in the second session with new tyres. Unfortunately, on this special track, traffic can cost you an awful lot of time. Over a long run, the situation seems good, but we still have work to do on finding the right balance of the car and that includes also on the first lap on new tyres. All the same, I am confident."

Team manager Luca Baldisserri added, "As always, it is difficult to judge the result of free practice, because there are too many unknown factors in our main rivals' work programme, as outright performance can be compromised by traffic on the track. As for ourselves, we can say we achieved everything we had put on the day's job list, without any particular problems. We worked on finding the best set-up on the car for Sunday's race and on the comparison between the two types of tyre on offer from Bridgestone. From what we have seen today, the choice seems less evident than usual. In the light of these three hours of practice, we think we will be competitive both in qualifying and in the race."

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