25/05/2013
NEWS STORY
Sebastian Vettel: I was a bit annoyed with my flying lap in Q3; I think I maybe pushed a bit too hard here and there. The start of the lap wasn't bad, but also it wasn't great; with hindsight I should have gone for two flying laps at the start of Q3 and not one, but I decided for that. I thought the tyres would be good enough for the first lap. I have been struggling all weekend, but in the end it was tight. Pole was probably possible today, but we are third. I think with the Mercedes in front, it was expected that they would be strong. We have a good race car and should be able to do well from there tomorrow.
Mark Webber: Yeah I'm pretty happy with that. It's very easy to be towards the back when you have a disruptive session with those conditions, but we managed to survive all the tricky sections and put together a reasonably tidy effort. You can always look at timings later and think you could have done things differently, but in the heat of the moment you make the decision as to what you think is right and overall it wasn't too bad. The conditions are changing and the tyres are tricky, so starting on the second row here is not bad. It's a long race and a lot of strategy can unfold, so we'll see what we can do from there.
Christian Horner: A very strong team performance with both cars lining up on the second row of the grid in what was a very tight qualifying session. Sebastian put in a very quick lap at the beginning of Q3 and unfortunately didn't quite have enough to hold on to the pole, but nonetheless a great performance from him and from Mark who once again has done a great job in Monte Carlo.
Thierry Salvi, Renault: At Monaco, getting the engine response completely correct is absolutely crucial to lap time gain. The slow corners and short bursts of power between them require a very precise power delivery in the low rev range, but one of the main advantages of the RS27 is its ability to be mapped to deliver torque exactly when the driver needs it. This helped today and we ended up pretty much where we thought. Tomorrow's race will be difficult to predict, as overtaking is hard here, so no doubt the tyre wear will play yet another role in the results.
Check out our Qualifying gallery, here.