Monaco FR3.5: Norman Nato leads Carlos Sainz Jr in practice

While championship leader Sainz spent the entire session as one of the leading runners, regularly trading places at the top with 2013 Monte Carlo podium finisher Jazeman Jaafar, Nato strung a lap together with around 10 minutes remaining to go fastest.

The Frenchman's effort put him clear of Sainz by just 0.040 seconds, while ISR's Jaafar finished the session half a second down on the DAMS cars as best of the rest in third.

Sauber Formula 1 test driver Sergey Sirotkin was next up ahead of Pietro Fantin, who had also enjoyed a brief spell on top in the early part of the session.

Behind Zoel Amberg in sixth came Sainz's main title challenger Oliver Rowland, who is making his Monaco debut this weekend.

Of the other leading drivers in the title race, Pierre Gasly and Will Stevens were 13th and 14th respectively. Nikolay Martsenko, currently fifth in the standings, is not racing with Comtec this weekend.

The session was relatively incident free, with Luca Ghiotto the only driver to crash when he understeered into the barriers at Ste Devote after 18 of the 45 minutes.

Pos  Driver               Team     Time       Gap
 1.  Norman Nato          DAMS     1m24.649s
 2.  Carlos Sainz Jr      DAMS     1m24.689s  +0.040s
 3.  Jazeman Jaafar       ISR      1m25.262s  +0.613s
 4.  Sergey Sirotkin      Fortec   1m25.365s  +0.716s
 5.  Pietro Fantin        Draco    1m25.369s  +0.720s
 6.  Zoel Amberg          AVF      1m25.390s  +0.741s
 7.  Oliver Rowland       Fortec   1m25.489s  +0.840s
 8.  Will Buller          Arden    1m25.890s  +1.241s
 9.  Marco Sorensen       Tech 1   1m26.228s  +1.579s
10.  Matthieu Vaxiviere   Lotus    1m26.251s  +1.602s
11.  Matias Laine         Strakka  1m26.271s  +1.622s
12.  Marlon Stockinger    Lotus    1m26.495s  +1.846s
13.  Pierre Gasly         Arden    1m26.558s  +1.909s
14.  Will Stevens         Strakka  1m26.653s  +2.004s
15.  Roberto Merhi        Zeta     1m26.950s  +2.301s
16.  Roman Mavlanov       Zeta     1m27.489s  +2.840s
17.  Beitske Visser       AVF      1m27.492s  +2.843s
18.  Oliver Webb          Pons     1m27.528s  +2.879s
19.  Meindert van Buuren  Pons     1m28.781s  +4.132s
20.  Luca Ghiotto         Draco    1m28.933s  +4.284s
21.  Andrea Roda          Comtec   1m35.486s  +10.837s