Charles Pic lead the few hardy drivers that went out for more than just installation purposes. The rain was, if anything, worse than during Free Practice 1 and nearly everyone stayed warm and dry up to the hour mark.
When, eventually, Rosberg went out in the Mercedes, the in-car camera pictures showed just how carefully he was driving around the circuit.
Nearly everyone was in the same boat, and given the weather that might have been a better option than the F1 car.
The weather today was so bad that McLaren sent out a tweet asking who would like to drive the car in the conditions they were encountering - I don't know that they were expecting a number of people, including yours truly, to offer their services, though I did point out that it was unlikely that I'd make it out of the garage not to mind the pits. I don't need to tell you that the same would be likely to be true even if the sun were shining and the track bone dry (no matter how I'd like to delude myself).
It reminds me of a dream I had when, after driving all day for a two hour meeting, and having to make the return journey only 6 hours later, I decided that, in the absence of an alarm clock my best bet to get up to make the journey back was to replay, twice in my head, a wet Monaco GP (running for two hours a time). Little did I know that it would be a vivid dream in which Roberto Moreno had failed to appear for the race and Guido Forti came out onto the start finish straight and asked if anyone in the crowd would like to drive his car in the race.
In the general scrum and chaos that followed I managed to secure the seat and I remember driving that bucket of bolts for nearly 4 hours (the entire time I was asleep) even though the race should only have lasted two.
Did I wake up refreshed and excited? Did I hell! I felt like I had been through the mill, out the other side and then wrung out like the proverbial wet rag - and then I had to drive for another 6 hours. I do seem to recall though that I brought the notoriously bad Forti home in the top ten, ahead of Pedro Diniz.
