"I think it was a very positive weekend," chief technical officer Mike Gascoyne confirms, "It was the first time this year where we have genuinely outqualified some people on pace and we would have finished ahead of some teams on pace. It wasn't just by default or them not finishing. Having a good race pace is obviously a step forward and, with Adrian, we could have finished in front of people.
"I don't think it's necessarily anything to do with the nature of the Monte Carlo circuit either - I think we are seeing the true level of performance of the car now. Some people did struggle, and this was probably due to the circuit, but I think our pace is just a sign of the progress the team is making. It's not just the high downforce circuits - we had a good test in low downforce configuration at Paul Ricard too. I hope we will see a similar relative speed in Canada and Indy."
Having hit the wall at Casino Square two weekends ago, Sutil will be looking to avoid a repeat as he makes his debut on the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.
"Monaco is one of my favourite tracks, and Montreal is a bit different, as the walls are not so close and it's not quite as tight, but I think it will be a good race," the German says, "I'm looking forward to it - the goal has definitely got to be to keep cars behind us, have a clean race and get to the finish.
"We saw an improvement in the [Monaco] race and put in a good performance. The car was quick and we could race and outqualify other cars. We were able to fight with the Aguri and the
Toyota, which was very interesting. I think we could be in the same position again in Canada."
With Canada being renowned as a race of attrition, Spyker will be hoping that a reliable run could bring it to within touching distance of the points, although Albers is hedging his bets while the team waits for its B-spec machine.
"The gap to the others was smaller [in Monaco], for sure," he admits, "We were not that far away in the race, but Monaco is a special track and the differences in cars are not so obvious. But I hope we can keep up like this for the rest of the season.
