Qualifying - Monaco GP report: Renault F1

Renault Sport Formula One Team’s tough Monaco Grand Prix weekend continued in qualifying today. After a brush with the barriers in the earlier FP3, Jolyon Palmer was eliminated in Q1 after setting the eighteenth quickest time. Kevin Magnussen progressed through to Q2, but his lap of 1min 16.058secs was only enough for sixteenth on the grid.

Kevin Magnussen

“It’s not great to be sixteenth; it’s about where we’ve been for most of the year whereas we were hoping for something better here. In Monaco there is a high probability of crashes and maybe it’s going to rain too, so you never know what could happen tomorrow.

Jolyon Palmer

“It was a tough session but ultimately the position is around where we’re accustomed being. It’s great to drive here and I was really hoping to get through to Q2 but we just didn’t have the pace. It’s a long race so I’m hoping for some big storms to help mix the field up a bit so we can drive through and get some points. Monaco is certainly difficult to overtake in a straight-forward race.

Alan Permane, Trackside Operations Director

How was qualifying for the team?

Kevin got into Q2 which is obviously one positive and Jolyon gave a good performance for his first Monaco qualifying. We know that Monaco can be notoriously difficult to master but equally it’s true we would like to be further up the grid.

What are the considerations for tomorrow’s race?

If it’s a dry race without incidents then moving through the field can be very difficult. There’s low tyre degradation here which means you can be more flexible with when to change tyres. Wet weather or incidents on track could throw some added variables but whatever happens we’ll be pushing as hard as possible.