Lewis Hamilton carried his Spanish Grand Prix winning form to the streets of Monte-Carlo as he posted the fastest time in the first free practice session of the Monaco Grand Prix weekend on Thursday.
Hamilton's best lap time of 1:12.106 was a tad quicker than Red Bull's Max Verstappen and Valtteri Bottas in the second Mercedes.
The trio split by a mere 0.072 of a second at the top of the timing screens at the end of the 90 minutes morning session, suggesting that Verstappen may well be in the mix at the 66th edition of the sport's most famous race.
Local hero Charles Leclerc was fourth fastest and best of the Ferrari duo, albeit over three tenths slower than the prime time but almost four tenths up on his teammate Sebastian Vettel. The Reds are either keeping their powder dry or on the back foot already. Time will tell.
Pierre Gasly rounded out the top six places for the Big Three team but the Frenchman, sixth fastest, was a full second adrift of his teammate Verstappen.
After a torrid weekend in Barcelona last time out, Nico Hulkenberg popped up seventh fastest and Best of the Rest in the Renault, 1.1 seconds shy of the fastest effort.
Despite a bizarre IT failure in their makeshift pit garage, Haas managed to get two cars in the top ten with Kevin Magnussen eighth and Romain Grosjean in tenth.
The pair were black flagged because as telemetry issues messed with the data logging, forcing the team pit both cars early in the session.
The Haas drivers were split on the timing screens by Kimi Raikkonen in the Alfa Romeo.
Carlos Sainz also had limited running when an issue was found on his PU package which cost him most of the session.
For the first time this year, a Williams was not slowest of all the runners in a session, the dubious honour this time went to Racing Point's Lance Stroll who was four seconds off the pace when the flag waved to end the session.
It was a typical morning on the green streets which will rubber in as the weekend progresses. Inevitably drivers missed their braking points and scuttled up the narrow runoff lanes, with a few drivers brushing the barrier at what is also the sport's most notorious venue. Mistakes punished as they should be.
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