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Nico Rosberg of Williams led second practice for the Monaco Grand Prix from McLaren's Lewis Hamilton and Rubens Barrichello of Brawn GP, who had topped the morning session.

Rosberg has been renowned as something of a practice specialist this season, with team bosses Frank Williams and Patrick Head even having to deflect suggestions that the team run low fuel in such sessions in order to grab headlines.

The German's time of 1:15.243 was over two-tenths of a second faster than that of reigning world champion Hamilton after they had exchanged P1 on a couple of occasions.

The Briton will be cheered by his performance - setting his best time after sliding the car beautifully out of the narrow final corner - only a fortnight after publicly denouncing the MP4-24.

Barrichello was one spot ahead of team-mate and World Championship leader Jenson Button, who improved after ending the morning session in eighth.

Felipe Massa was fifth fastest for Ferrari ahead of Sebastian Vettel, whose Red Bull RB5 was repaired after smoke had poured out of the engine in the morning.

Heikki Kovalainen (McLaren) and Kimi Raikkonen (Ferrari) followed after fighting it out at the top for much of the afternoon, while Kazuki Nakajima was ninth in the Williams and Nelson Piquet Jr 10th in the Renault ahead of team-mate Fernando Alonso.

Mark Webber missed the first 45 minutes of the hour-and-a-half-long session with a transmission problem yet looked good when he emerged, only to tail off into 12th by the end.

Force India's Adrian Sutil impressed with 13th ahead of Jarno Trulli as the Toyotas again struggled - Timo Glock was 18th in the other TF109.

The Toro Rossos of Sebastien Buemi and Sebastien Bourdais were 15th and 16th, but the worst-performing team was BMW: Nick Heidfeld was 17th and Robert Kubica failed to make an appearance after engine failure blighted his F1.09.

Giancarlo Fisichella (Force India) was 19th.

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Practice 1 report

Brawn GP's Rubens Barrichello topped first practice for the Monaco Grand Prix from Felipe Massa of Ferrari and McLaren's Lewis Hamilton.

Barrichello's fastest time of 1:17.189 was set with over 20 minutes to go of the hour-and-a-half-long session, immediately after he had taken the top spot from 2008 Monaco winner Hamilton.

Massa and Hamilton were three-tenths of a second behind the pace-setter, with the latter's team-mate Heikki Kovalainen continuing McLaren's impressive record in the principality with fourth spot.

Behind him was Massa's colleague at Ferrari Kimi Raikkonen.

In sunny conditions Williams, so often the leaders in practice, took sixth and seventh positions in the morning session - although this time it was Japanese Kazuki Nakajima who pipped German Nico Rosberg.

Brawn's British star Jenson Button, the leader in the drivers' standings, never came close to matching the times of his team-mate Barrichello and ended in eighth ahead of Fernando Alonso (Renault) and Mark Webber (Red Bull).

Sebastian Vettel, third in the championship behind the Brawns and described by Ross Brawn during the session as the main threat to his marque, dropped out with less than half an hour to go as smoke poured out of his engine.

He was 13th behind Sebastien Buemi (Toro Rosso) and Nelson Piquet Jr (Renault), with the other Toro Rosso driver Sebastien Bourdais 14th.

It was a difficult session for BMW and Toyota: the former's driver Robert Kubica described the car as "a disaster", with particular reference to the rear grip, before improving at the end to 16th.

Fellow BMW man Nick Heidfeld felt that his brakes were dangerous on the narrow, twisty circuit and his car spent the first half of the session in the garage before he managed to snatch 17th.

Toyota duo Timo Glock and Jarno Trulli propped up the timesheets with the Force Indias of Giancarlo Fisichella and Adrian Sutil 15th and 18th respectively.

Jonathan Symcox / Eurosport