Formula 1

QUOTES FROM THURSDAY PRACTICE IN MONTE CARLO

Valtteri Bottas: It’s great to be here in Monaco and good fun with the current cars. There are still some improvements we can make to be quicker and the rain didn’t help in the afternoon, but we do have some good data to work from. Saturday will be vital in the morning for set-up and of course qualifying around Monaco is key to having a good weekend. Overall I am feeling positive and I’m looking forward to getting back in the car.

Felipe Massa: Today was a tough day. I had some issues this morning with the power unit sensor so that limited my running, or at least the amount I could push. This afternoon it was wet and so I only went out at the end of the session and then suffered with traffic. The car is quick and Valtteri has shown that, so qualifying on Saturday will be very important.

Romain Grosjan: “This morning was a learning experience as the tyres are pretty hard here so it’s difficult to find enough grip. This made things a little tricky today as there’s no space for mistakes here. Certainly the car is working well and we could run through a decent programme today, even with missing a lot of the afternoon session because of the wet track. We hope the weather will be better on Saturday and we will have found a better balance with the car too.” 

DANIEL RICCIARDO: “It was a shame we didn’t run so much this afternoon due to the conditions, but if it rains over the weekend then we’ll want to use the tyres, so there was a bit of waiting around, At the end the track still had a few damp patches, so we didn’t really learn that much this afternoon but I think the morning went well, so we’ve just got to try and get the set-up from that. The few laps I did this afternoon felt similar to the morning in terms of car balance and the things we need to work on, so I think the direction we’ve got to go is pretty clear. If we’re going to challenge the Mercs then I think this is the place for it, they don’t seem to have one sector at the moment which is blowing everyone away, but obviously it’s still early days.”

SEBASTIAN VETTEL : “Obviously we’d love to run in the dry the whole time here, but of course if it’s wet it’s the same for everyone. Mercedes were very quick this morning and we see that usually, come Saturday, they are able to pick up their pace, so we’ll try to do the same. We potentially are a little bit closer here, but you know at the moment it’s all guessing. I think the big advantage on this track would be that there’s not that many straights, but we have to wait and see. We were obviously limited today on what we could learn in terms of pace and range, we know that it’s quite important to qualify in the front here so if there is a chance then we have to use it.”

Nico Hulkenberg: “The wet weather did not give us an opportunity to run much this afternoon, but I feel we have made the most of the time available this morning. In terms of performance the car is feeling okay and we just need to make some set-up tweaks and work on the balance before Saturday. The focus has to be on qualifying here because it’s even more important than at any other track. So we just need to optimise the car to be ready for Saturday.”

Sergio Perez: “The day was disturbed by the weather so the work we have done is quite limited. I feel quite happy with the car and we ran in the top eight all day so it’s been positive. That’s where we need to be aiming for Saturday because qualifying well here is so important. There are still quite a few unknowns because I did not manage to do any long runs or race preparation, but it’s the same for everyone.”