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Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa were more than happy with the Ferrari F10 around the streets of Monte Carlo in Thursday practice – Massa describing the car as being “10 times better” than it was on the opening day at Barcelona.

The Italian squad made a highly encouraging start to the weekend in the Principality, Alonso setting the pace in both practice sessions to send a clearmessage to the pace-setting Red Bull squad about the F10's potential here.

Alonso ended the afternoon session just over a tenth of a second clear of Mercedes’s Nico Rosberg and RBR’s Sebastian Vettel and admitted it was a positive sign for Ferrari that he had found the F10 so easy to drive from the off.

Asked if topping the opening day times at Monaco was more important than other venues, he said: “It’s a circuit that you need to get confidence as soon as possible.

“It’s a circuit you need to feel okay in the car and to maximise the potential.

“It’s very good to start in a good way because you don’t need to get crazy or to change completely the set-up or to find miracles for Saturday.

“You just need some continuity in the set-up, in the way you do the runs.

“Overall we found the car very, very good.

“From the beginning it was very easy to drive so I think Felipe and me we are happy with today’s sessions.”

An equally positive Massa, who finished fifth and fourth in the two sessions respectively, was delighted to find he was having no problems for grip levels after struggling badly in this area last week in Spain.

“I have good feelings for the car,” he said.

“For the grip level we faced today, the car was definitely much easier to drive compared to Barcelona where we were struggling massively in terms of grip level.

“So this is already quite positive. I can say that our Friday here in Monaco was 10 times better than our Friday in Barcelona, so this is also good for the weekend and I hope we carry on like this.”

Ferrari had admitted after Alonso finished a fortuitous second to the dominant Mark Webber in last Sunday’s race that it needed to improve the downforce levels on its F10 if it was serious about catching Red Bull.

Although the tight, slow Monte Carlo layout necessitates an extremely high downforce setting, Alonso says the lack of fast corners compared to Barcelona means good mechanical grip is even more important and thinks Ferrari has managed to make some improvements in this area.

However, he is not getting carried away by Ferrari’s Friday position and says it must focus on producing an error-free qualifying session when the action resumes on Saturday if it isn't to lose out in what he expects to be a tightly-packed front group.

“I think because here you need maximum downforce, for sure, but at the same time the effect of the downforce is much less here because there are not high-speed corners like Barcelona,” he said.

“Here it is only the Swimming Pool part a little bit you can improve by putting on more downforce so overall here I think the mechanical grip is more important, and also making the tyres work is more important

“So I think we did maybe improve a little bit compared to Barcelona and hopefully we are not one second behind Red Bull, but we need to wait until Saturday.

“We saw some strong Fridays for us and then some strong Fridays for McLaren but then on Saturday Red Bull got the pole position very easy.

“So we need to be clever and we need to do a good lap on Saturday as if not you can end sixth or seventh as we saw today.”

Massa added: “I expect Red Bull will have a good car definitely, but much more normal compared to what they were in Barcelona.”