Just ahead of the rain shower, Heikki Kovalainen set the fastest lap of the session on a 1:16.567s best and was on a faster lap when he spun at Piscine damaging the right rear corner of his McLaren Mercedes on the barriers.
The incident, the only notable one of the session, brought out the red flags for the MP4-23 to be removed and when the session resumed a few minutes later, the few spot of rain had turned into light rain and there were no further improvements.
The 26-year-old Finn led teammate Lewis Hamilton by more than five-tenths of a second in posting a fastest lap time of 1 minute, 16.567 seconds around Formula One’s famous street circuit.
McLaren, which has dominated F1’s most glamorous race with 14 victories in 25 races, led Thursday’s practice through Hamilton, who finished runner-up to former teammate Fernando Alonso last year.
Ferrari hasn’t won at the famed city circuit since 2001 and has only five victories in the last 30.
Nico Rosberg of Williams, who has put himself in contention after the second fastest lap on Thursday, was fourth and BMW Sauber’s Robert Kubica rounded out the top five.
Felipe Massa set the sixth fastest time in his Ferrari ahead of Mark Webber in the leading Red Bull Renault. David Coulthard missed much of the opening 30 minutes of the session, just getting in one flying lap before the red flags flew. As a result he found himself slowest of the 20 runners.
Adrian Sutil was eighth fastest for Force India, perhaps a little misleading ahead of qualifying, as Giancarlo Fisichella went off at Mirabeau but didn’t seem to make contact with the barriers and was 19th fastest.
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