“We will prepare as well as possible and try and bring home as many points as possible,” the man from São Paolo insisted. “My testing at Paul Ricard last week did not go particularly well as heavy rain affected my day of running. I did 15 laps in the wet, so it was very difficult to do anything meaningful, but at least the team got the two days before that running in Monaco configuration with Kimi and the results look reasonable.
“It will not be an easy race this weekend and we can expect McLaren to be strong as usual, although I think we can be on the pace too. We have to wait and see what happens on Thursday, because it is difficult to say what we can expect from ourselves and the opposition.
“Even if we ran on the short track at Ricard, designed to simulate some aspects of Monaco, it still is not the real thing. Monaco is unique and [it is] impossible to recreate exactly the same track characteristics, so there are some unknown factors going into the weekend.
“Another unknown as usual is the weather, and the forecast is predicting rain at various times over the race weekend. Rain at Monaco makes it a big lottery, and it is impossible to predict anything. Without any electronic driver aids such as traction control either, it will be even harder.
“In general, I think the
Scuderia is in better shape than it was before this race twelve months ago. Last year, even though I finished on the podium in third place, it was not what I would consider a good race because we were a long way off the pace of the
McLaren, so I am looking forward to being stronger this year.”
