Bridgestone's super soft tyre took Ferrari driver Fernando Alonso to the fastest time in the variable weather conditions of the opening day of the Monaco Grand Prix.

Alonso set a time of 1:14.904 in the afternoon practice session, leaving him fastest from Mercedes GP Petronas F1 Team driver Nico Rosberg, with Red Bull Racing's Sebastian Vettel third quickest. Alonso was also fastest in the morning practice session, using the medium compound Bridgestone Potenza.

What was significant about today's running?
Hirohide Hamashima - Bridgestone Director of Motorsport Tyre Development: "Today we had good weather conditions in the morning and at the start of the afternoon practice session, however after that it became cooler and light rain fell on the track. In the morning the warm-up of the medium compound was quite good for this circuit and the track was showing good improvement before the rain started falling. I am happy that we were able to show that the allocation of the medium and super soft gave very reasonable performance today."

How do you expect this allocation to work over the weekend?
HH: "This is a particularly difficult question here as it is a challenge to predict the track condition as there is no F1 running tomorrow and we don't know what the weather will do. Initial conclusions from the data is that the super soft tyre should be able to last a reasonable distance if used at the start of the race, and the medium compound will deliver strong performance once it is warmed up. However, the track condition and weather have been very variable so far this week so we really face many unknowns."

To check out our Monaco practice gallery, click here