Schumacher confident in Mercedes pace

Schumacher finished the day fifth quickest, with team-mate Nico Rosberg second, and the seven-time world champion reckons the unique nature of the street circuit will prevent the likes of Red Bull from running away at the front.

"You clearly have to say that Monaco is a very special place to drive," Schumacher said. "I got back into the rhythm of the track, especially on the long runs, and I think we can be quite confident for Saturday as the car is definitely quite reasonable to handle.

"The other teams who have a certain top speed advantage on other tracks at the moment do not have this advantage here, so the whole field comes a bit closer together which will make it a very interesting qualifying in my view. I am looking forward to it."

Rosberg was pleased with his day's work, despite losing running time during first practice to a suspension problem.

"We made good progress this afternoon after losing some time in the morning with a pushrod problem that we had to fix," he said. "The laptimes looked quite promising in the second session and I felt very comfortable in the car.

"We were able to improve the set-up continuously and get the tyres working better as the session went on. So everything looks promising after the first day."