Ferrari boss reveals “key” to Monaco F1 qualifying after Friday dominance

Fred Vasseur explained the “key” to qualifying at the Monaco Grand Prix after Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc finished one-two in Formula 1 Friday practice.

Ferrari dominated the opening two practice sessions of the Monaco weekend, with both Leclerc and Hamilton topping a session, with the latter ending the day as the fastest driver.

But while the margin looked relatively comfortable in an opening session run largely on the hard and medium tyres, the gap shrank considerably on soft rubber, with Max Verstappen 0.111s back, although George Russell remained half-a-second off the pace in fourth.

“In Monaco, the challenge is always to anticipate the next session, the evolution of the grip for the drivers and for the team, and you always have to adjust everything a bit,” said Ferrari team principal, Vasseur, who will miss the Saturday action after being taken to a "local medical facility" with an undisclosed illness. 

“Now, I think that the second session was not bad, it was just difficult to put a lap together.

“You have to keep in mind that it was mega-challenging for the traffic in Monaco, and now with ten percent more cars on track, it is more than ten percent more difficult, and with these tyres, we have exactly the same story as last year now, that we can have convergence of, not performance, but of understanding of the car.

“With so many cars on track, it’s difficult to do a proper out lap, which means that sometimes you are pushing and have to slow down and such.

“I think it will be the key for tomorrow, to be able to do a proper out lap, to arrive in the right window, and to do a clean lap. It will be a challenge and I was not expecting that it would be an easy life.”

On the diminished margin to the chasing pack in FP2, Vasseur added: “I think it is more the execution. We will see on Saturday.

“But if you look at last year in Monaco, you have a kind of convergence of performance over the session. You can’t expect to be four-tenths faster than everybody the whole weekend.

“It means that we have to make some steps, perhaps in the approach to the weekend, the evaluation of the grip for the next session, and it’s going to be the key for Saturday.”

While the majority of the field followed a traditional run plan during their qualifying simulations with laps to cool the car or recharge the batteries separating push efforts, Verstappen was able to string together a series of hot laps, consistently building tyre temperature and shaving time from his efforts.

Asked if cool down laps are still needed on the narrow streets, Vasseur said: “It’s more when you are on track, who are the cars around you and what are they doing? It’s all part of our preparation for qualifying.

“We need to understand what we want to do and to go in this direction.”