“It's difficult to make predictions here because anything can happen. We are expecting to see a wet track during the weekend, which will make things especially tough. There are a lot of variables that make this a unique place to race, but the atmosphere is always special.”
Sébastien Bourdais:
“This morning when I woke up, I thought, ‘this is it, I'm finally going to drive Monaco in an
F1 car!' It was a case of finding out about the new car, which was always going to be difficult on this demanding track. We always ran with a heavy fuel load, so we should not read anything into the lap times. We are not where we want to be, but I don't think we are as far behind as it might look.
“However, I was expecting us to be in slightly better shape than this, which means Saturday and Sunday are going to be interesting. We are lacking a bit of grip, maybe because we lack a little downforce in this maximum downforce set-up – which our top speeds would also suggest. At least my past experience here has been a help, and this morning I got into a rhythm quite quickly.”
Adrian Sutil:
“It was an interesting free practice. Obviously the track is a street circuit, so you take some time to get used to it and also for the track to get some rubber back on it. In general it was okay, but we have a few problems with understeer in the car again and the same procedure with the tyres as in all the previous events – it is very difficult to get the tyres to work well.
“The long runs are quite quick and I am quite happy about that, but over the shorter runs we have to work with the tyres a bit more. I think, though, with a bit of work we can be quite competitive over the weekend.”
Sebastian Vettel:
“Certainly not the best first two sessions of a race weekend. It is the first time we have had the new car at a race, so it was always going to be difficult to know what to expect and I seemed to struggle a lot. I was fighting with the car on a circuit that I have always liked in the past.
