Team reaction after day one in Monaco (part 1)

Ferrari

Fernando Alonso: "It’s only Thursday, so the main aim was to understand how the tyres work and get confident with the circuit. On this track a major set up change might give you half a tenth, but trusting your driving can see you gain half a second. We therefore worked on finding the right feeling with the car and on making it easy to drive. There is still a lot of work to do and quite a margin for improvement. The track conditions will get better by Saturday, given that so many cars from the different categories will be running over the next couple of days. I hope that in two days time I will again find a well balanced car. I can understand that there could be a level of pessimism after the show of strength from Red Bull in Barcelona qualifying, but we know that here, having the right set-up can make more of a difference than pure aerodynamic downforce and we already have a good baseline, given that last year, Kimi nearly took pole with a car that was far off the F10 in terms of its potential."

Felipe Massa: "The situation is definitely very different to Barcelona. From one week to the next I have found a much more stable car which is easy to drive and has much more grip. I have to say I can only be happy with the F10 and the way things went today. Having said that, there is still a lot to do to be done to be as well prepared as possible for the rest of the weekend. The traffic could be a problem, especially in Q1 and we will have to try and manage the situation as well as possible. Here it is always difficult to get a perfect lap: there are so many slow corners where you can lose a lot of time, which you never get back. However, getting it right is really especially satisfying."

Stefano Domenicali: "This weekend has got off to a positive start for us, but we are well aware that the result of free practice does not tell you much and that, especially on an untypical track like this, the situation can change rapidly. There is still a lot of work to do to be as well prepared as possible for qualifying and the race, but we can be reasonably confident in affirming that we will be in the hunt. Now we have over a day and a half ahead of us to fine tune every detail in order to get out every last bit of potential from the package we have at our disposal."

Chris Dyer: "I would say this was a good day. First of all, it’s always positive to be able to complete three hours of free practice around the Monaco track without doing any damage to the cars, which meant both drivers were able to work through their entire planned programme: we just had to shorten the time on some elements in the afternoon, because of the approaching rain. Both Felipe and Fernando said they were pleased with the handling of the car and managed to get both types of tyre brought here by Bridgestone to work well. Clearly, without knowing the fuel loads in the cars of our closest rivals, it’s hard to know exactly where we are compared to them, but I think I can safely say we should be able to fight for the top places on the starting grid."

Mercedes GP

Just four days after Sunday’s Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona, Formula One cars took to the streets of Monte Carlo today for the first two practice sessions ahead of the Monaco Grand Prix.

The Mercedes GP pair of Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher spent the morning tuning the set-up of their MGP W01 cars to the unique demands of the low-speed and high-downforce circuit. Michael completed 21 laps and finished the session in sixth place however a lengthy change required on Nico’s car cost him some track time and he completed 15 laps and ended the morning in 11th position.

The skies darkened with light rain towards the end of the afternoon session but not enough to require a change from slick tyres. Nico and Michael completed a busy programme with the two Bridgestone tyre compounds for the weekend. Their quickest laps, set whilst the track was completely dry, put Nico in second place and Michael in fifth position.

Nico Rosberg: “Monaco is a very special and challenging circuit and we had a positive start to our weekend here today. We made good progress this afternoon after losing some time in the morning with a pushrod problem that we had to fix. The lap times looked quite promising in the second session and I felt very comfortable in the car. We were able to improve the set-up continuously and get the tyres working better as the session went on. So everything looks promising after the first day and I’m looking forward to getting on with qualifying on Saturday.”

Michael Schumacher: “Today’s practice was a lot of fun. You clearly have to say that Monaco is a very special place to drive and I really enjoyed it. I got back into the rhythm of the track, especially on the long runs, and I think we can be quite confident for tomorrow as the car is definitely quite reasonable to handle. The other teams who have a certain top speed advantage on other tracks at the moment do not have this advantage here, so the whole field comes a bit closer together which will make it a very interesting qualifying in my view. I am looking forward to it.”

Ross Brawn: “As always at Monaco, the track conditions evolved rapidly today and it was important to make full use of the available practice time. We lost some running with Nico this morning but he did well to come back and find reasonable solutions for the set-up. We followed our usual practice programme of set-up, fuel load and tyre comparisons today. Our low fuel pace seems reasonable but we have more work to do on high fuel before Sunday. Overall a reasonable start to the weekend and we are enjoying the unique challenge and working environment that Monaco provides.”

Norbert Haug: “Quite a promising start to the weekend for us today and certainly a different picture from what we saw last Sunday in Barcelona. Nico and Michael´s lap times on both types of tyres with lesser fuel as well as during race simulation runs looked not bad at all. There is definitely more work to do before Saturday but so far so good.”

Red Bull Renault

Sebastian Vettel: "We did a lot of laps today, which is good as that’s important in Monaco. The car feels alright, but if you look at the times it’s difficult to judge where we are. One thing that’s clear it will be very, very over the weekend. The top four teams are split by a couple of tenths and fuel loads are not as important here, so it’s close. It looks challenging. Qualifying been good for us at the last races and hope it continues on Saturday."

Mark Webber: "It was a pretty good day today - we went a bit early with the options to beat the weather and we’ve got a bit of work to do with the balance, but in general it was good. We’ve made progress in the low-speed stuff since last year. We saw indications of it in Singapore and Abu Dhabi and what we learned with the RB5 has rolled into the RB6. It will be tighter here than it was in Spain, it’s a special track – we know that. Saturday will be an exciting qualifying session for definite."

Renault

Robert Kubica: I’m a big fan of street circuits so it was good fun driving around Monaco today, and things went pretty well for me during both sessions. We still have a couple of issues to work on with the balance of the car so it’s good that we have a free day tomorrow when we can look over the data. Hopefully we can improve the car a bit more before qualifying.

Vitaly Petrov: I enjoyed my first experience of Monaco in an F1 car. We spent the day working on the set-up and we changed a lot between the morning and the afternoon, which made the car much better. It’s a difficult track because you need to push hard all the time, the walls are very close and you have to concentrate hard to make sure you don’t make any mistakes. At the moment the balance is not too bad, but we still need to work on some things to improve the car before qualifying on Saturday.

Technical Debrief with Alan Permane, Chief Race Engineer:

Summary of the day: It’s been a very positive day for us with both drivers completing good mileage. Robert was the quickest car on the medium compound (prime) tyre, although he didn’t have such a good run on the super-soft, but we’ve no major concerns. As for Vitaly, this was his first time at Monaco in an F1 car and he did a very good job during both sessions, and has ended the day close to Robert in terms of pace.

Track conditions: Today’s conditions were typical Monaco: dirty, dusty and constantly evolving throughout the day. There was some light rain towards the end of the afternoon session, but the forecast for Saturday and Sunday suggests that more rain is unlikely.

General car balance: The car is working very well, but it’s still not 100% and we’ve got to dial out some oversteer. Fortunately we have a free day tomorrow to look over the data to try and cure that.

McLaren Mercedes

Lewis Hamilton: “Obviously, we weren’t at the top of the timesheets, but I’ve really been enjoying driving around here today. When you’re at Monaco, things just seem to happen so much faster than normal – it feels two or three times quicker than at other circuits. You’re always on the edge, and if you brake just a little bit too late, then you’ll be in the barrier. It’s an incredible feeling.

“More importantly, this year’s car just feels fantastic – it’s light years ahead of last year’s car. And we made some good steps forward with the set-up. Of course, everyone at the front of the grid is looking pretty competitive, but I think we should be okay.

“We’ll do our homework tonight. Qualifying’s going to be tough, I hope the weather stays okay for us and that we can fight for a spot in the top three.”

Jenson Button: "This morning felt good, we went through some positive set-up changes and I felt pretty happy with the car. For P2, we made some further changes, but I don’t think all of them were an improvement. So we went back in a few areas, and our long-run pace was good, so I’m feeling very happy about that.

“Tomorrow, we’ve still got a little bit of work to do to understand what’s best for low fuel and new tyres. But I think we understand where we’ve got to be, because we were on the pace this morning.

“Overall, the Ferrari looks very quick, and I’m pretty sure Red Bull are hiding their pace. But it’s the normal cars up at the front, and I’m sure we’ll get a better idea on Saturday morning.

“McLaren always produces a good car around Monaco, they’ve won 15 times around here – more than anyone else – so hopefully we can do well on Saturday.”

Martin Whitmarsh: “A very productive pair of sessions for us – even if we know we still have much to do to reach our ultimate potential around this most demanding of circuits.

“Jenson and Lewis got themselves dialled in extremely quickly this morning and were both happy with the car. This afternoon, it seems like some of the changes we made between the sessions weren’t as positive as we’d hoped, so we had to dial back on some of those. We’ve still got a few issues to resolve – but the engineers have the whole of tomorrow to rectify them, so I’m sure we’ll be competitive for the rest of the weekend”

“A quick look at today’s times would suggest that Saturday’s qualifying session will be extremely tense and incredibly closely fought – which is fantastic for Formula 1.”

Force India

The blue riband event of the 2010 FIA Formula One World Championship, the Monaco Grand Prix, got underway today with two free practice sessions around the Principality’s tight and tortuous streets. The Force India F1 Team enjoyed a good first day, with Adrian Sutil finishing both sessions inside the top 10 and Tonio Liuzzi 13th and 15th quickest in FP1 and 2 respectively.

Both drivers used the opening session to establish a good baseline on the harder tyres available this weekend, while the second session combined extended runs on both compounds. With a larger field and great performance differentials this year, traffic played a pivotal role, however the team was able to complete its scheduled work in preparation for Saturday’s crucial qualifying session.

Adrian Sutil: It was a very good day for me. I’m very happy with my performance and with the car. The set-up was really good and we didn’t have to make any major changes over the day, which means there is not so much work for tomorrow and Saturday’s final practice. The car is going very consistently and I could set good lap times so the end classification looks promising, but we can also be very satisfied about the pace of the long runs. We didn’t have many problems with the tyre compounds here, just a bit of graining on the soft one, but it’s under control and nothing to worry about. Overall I think we look pretty strong for a practice day and can be confident going into qualifying.

Tonio Liuzzi: It was a difficult Friday due to the traffic, as can be expected round here. It was tough with 24 cars in the field but you just need to have sensible driving from the others, particularly given the time differences between cars. But this isn’t going to change - Monaco is always like this and it is always a bit of a gamble but we have to throw our lot in as well. Even though the final position is not optimum, overall we can be pretty happy as the car is very good on a high fuel load. We need to improve the balance on the low fuel runs as we still struggled a little with the rear end grip but in general I think we are in a better shape compared to the last race. We have quite a lot of data we can work on tomorrow to try to improve everything for Saturday.

Dominic Harlow, chief race engineer: Our programme for today looked to concentrate on the super soft tyre long run performance after last year’s race where the tyre suffered quite high degradation in the early stages. We were also looking at cooling and brake set-up for the race here, both of which will be important on Sunday. Because of the light rain arriving at the end of FP2, things were accelerated slightly, with us running the super soft tyre slightly earlier to ensure that we got the data we needed. The drivers made full use of the laps they had to get comfortable on the circuit and the areas of new surface seem to have improved the grip level slightly. If we handle the busy track correctly on Saturday we can look forward to a competitive qualifying performance.

Dr Vijay Mallya, chairman and team principal: Today we were very satisfied with the pace of our longer runs and the positions in both sessions were encouraging. However what we have seen is that the speed difference between the cars - sometimes up to five seconds - will make qualifying a lottery. We believe we have the potential to be right up there fighting for Q3 but we’ll have to see how it goes in on Saturday. The right ingredients are there, we just need them to mix together in the right way.