Pastor Maldonado has confirmed his position as the man to beat in Monaco after setting the pace in today's free practice session, ahead of teammate Andreas Zuber and Bruno Senna.

The Piquet Sports driver improved on almost every lap around the Principality, setting a final time of 1:21.701 to take the top spot by almost half a second as his competitors struggled in vain to find a way to stay in touch.

Maldonado  was  the  first  man  on  track  when  the  green  light  was  shown,  and  was  clearly determined  to  make  the  most  of  the  traffic-free  conditions  to  set  the  early  pace,  with  Giorgio Pantano,  Vitaly  Petrov,  Andy  Soucek  and  Senna  all  swapping  best  laps  in  the  first  half  of  the session,  but  on  the  second  set  of  tyres  no  one  had  an  answer  for  the  Venezuelan's  tumbling times.

As can be expected on such a tight track there were a number of incidents as the drivers found and exceeded the limit: Jérôme D'Ambrosio soon returned minus his left rear wheel, while Zuber knocked Adam Carroll into the wall as he tried to overtake on the run down from Casino, knocking the Ulsterman's right front tyre off the rim in the process.

The Campos teammates both found the wall  at  St  Devote,  with  Ben  Hanley  stopping  immediately  while  Petrov  escaped  with  minor damage to his car. Behind the top three Soucek pipped Karun Chandhok to set an impressive fourth best time on his final  lap,  ahead  of  Pantano,  Adrian Valles, Romain Grosjean and Alvaro Parente. With the hot, fine  conditions set to continue through to this afternoon's qualifying session we are sure to see some fireworks as they push to be at the front of the grid for race one tomorrow.