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All sides predicted on Wednesday that the street venue was likely to witness a much tighter battle at the front than last week at Barcelona where RBR’s advantage was over 0.8s in qualifying – and that is how it played out on the opening day in the Principality as three tenths covered the top four teams in practice.

Vettel – who finished a close second and third respectively to Ferrari’s pacesetter Fernando Alonso in both sessions – concedes that while the accurate pecking order is difficult to call at this stage, there is very little to choose between the teams.

“We did a lot of laps today, which is good as that’s important in Monaco,” he said after racking up a total of 73 laps around the 2.1-mile track.

“The car feels alright, but if you look at the times it’s difficult to judge where we are.

“One thing that’s clear it will be very, very tight over the weekend.

“The top four teams are split by a couple of tenths and fuel loads are not as important here, so it’s close. It looks challenging.

“Qualifying has been good for us at the last races and I hope it continues on Saturday.”

Spanish Grand Prix victor Mark Webber was fourth quickest in the opening session before falling to 10th in the afternoon but had no major complaints with his RB6.

The Australian believes the team has managed to make big progress with its car’s performance in slower corners since an indifferent showing in Monaco last year and is fully braced for a closely-fought weekend.

“It was a pretty good day today – we went a bit early with the options to beat the weather and we’ve got a bit of work to do with the balance, but in general it was good,” Webber reported.

“We’ve made progress in the low-speed stuff since last year.

“We saw indications of it in Singapore and Abu Dhabi and what we learned with the RB5 has rolled into the RB6.

“It will be tighter here than it was in Spain, it’s a special track – we know that.

“Saturday will be an exciting qualifying session for definite.”