Among the changes to the track at Monza ahead of this weekend's Grand Prix is a new track surface on the pit straight. However, Fernando Alonso believes that it is not up to F1 standard and contributed to the problems drivers faced in yesterday's rain-hit qualifying session.

"I think the main straight was just too wet," he told reporters. "The new asphalt was not F1 standard, let's say.

"We can't have that difference between one asphalt and the other," he added referring to what he felt was the difference between the resurfaced stretch of track and the rest of the circuit.

"That's the worst place," added Daniel Ricciardo. "Around the chicane it's super wet as well, but that's low enough speed, it's no longer deemed dangerous. It's really towards the end of the straight, where the pit exit kind of starts."

When Q1 finally got underway, it was brought to a halt shortly after when Romain Grosjean lost control of his Haas, aquaplaning off the pit straight into the barriers, thereby causing the stoppage that was to last for almost two hours.

"It felt alright on the first lap," said the Frenchman, "but the rain came stronger for the second push lap.

"We know we have more aquaplaning on these tyres," he added, "it was fine most of the track, just the straight line, brand new tarmac, not clearing the water. It was just too dangerous."

"They resurfaced from the exit of the Parabolica to the first chicane," explained Pirelli's Mario Isola, according to Motorsport.com. "The roughness is quite different compared to the older tarmac. It's much smoother. If the roughness of the old tarmac is at 120 percent in the measurement we give to the teams, the new one is 60 percent, so it's half of the macro roughness.

"We wanted to check the level of grip, because obviously when you have such a big change in roughness you can have this part of the surface that is a lot more slippery compared to the rest of the circuit," he added.

"If the level of grip is good, we shouldn't expect any issue with the start," he said. "The worry was with this new tarmac it would be slippery and difficult to start. Also the pitlane has the same tarmac. But looking at what we collected in terms of information, the grip is good.

"The new tarmac is very black so to measure the track temperature we asked the guys to find a place that is representative of the rest of the circuit, because most of the circuit has a different tarmac with a different colour and a different heating process. If we measure on the very black one, we take the risk to have a measurement that is not fully representative, and is much hotter. This means under braking at the first chicane at that specific part the tarmac will be hotter than the rest of the circuit. But you arrive from a long straight, you cool down the tyre, and I don't think it's going to affect the tyre behaviour or performance."

Check out our Sunday gallery from Monza, here.