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.

What was significant about today's running?
Hirohide Hamashima - Bridgestone Director of Motorsport Tyre Development: "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?
HH: "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."

To check out our Monza practice gallery, click here