F1: Alonso Quickest Out Of Gate In Monaco

Formula 1

F1: Alonso Quickest Out Of Gate In Monaco

Ferrari driver Fernando Alonso paced Thursday's opening round of practice for the Monaco GP....

Jared Turner | Posted May 24, 2012 Monte Carlo (MCO)

Providing the latest evidence that Ferrari's early-season struggles may be a thing of the past, Fernando Alonso paced Thursday's opening round of Formula One practice at Circuit de Monaco.

Alonso, who finished second two weeks ago in Spain in his heavily upgraded Ferrari F2012, showed the way in FP1 with a lap of 1:16:265 around the famed Monte Carlo street course.

Following closely behind were the recently impressive Lotus of Romain Grosjean (1:16:630) and the Sauber of second-year F1 driver Sergio Perez (1:16:711).

McLaren driver Lewis Hamilton and Spanish GP winner Pastor Maldonado completed the top five, followed by Felipe Massa, Kamui Kobayashi, Jenson Button, Sebastian Vettel and Nico Rosberg.

The top 10 drivers were all separated by less than a second.

Michael Schumacher, looking to recover from a tumultuous start to 2012 that has fueled discussion of the seven-time World Champion's possible retirement at season's end, had a tough P1 as his Mercedes suffered front wing damage after taking a hard route over the curbs near the famous Monaco swimming pool.

Schumacher already faces a five-place grid penalty in Sunday's race for crashing into the back of Bruno Senna's Williams in the early laps of the recent Spanish GP.

A red flag brought out by the blown engine of Heikki Kovalainen's Caterham ended the 90-minute session nine minutes early.

Vettel, the 2011 winner of the Monaco GP and reigning World Champion, is tied with Alonso for the World Championship lead after five of 20 races.

Hamilton is third, eight points back, followed by Kimi Raikkonen (-12) and Mark Webber (-13).

Each event of 2012 has been won by a different driver, with Button (Australia), Alonso (Malaysia), Rosberg (China), Vettel (Bahrain) and Maldonado (Spain) all scoring, respectively.

Jared Turner is an Associate Editor for SPEED.com, covering NASCAR and Formula One, and is an Editor for TruckSeries.com. His professional motorsports writing career began in 2005.