25/05/2019
NEWS STORY
Carlos Sainz: "Very happy with this quali and back to Q3! After missing the whole of FP1 and a very difficult FP3 where we didn't get it right on the set-up, finishing P9 today is a great turnaround of the weekend. I managed to put together very good laps, improving consistently to finish with that 1m11.4s which I think was the maximum we could extract today.
"I always enjoy qualifying around these streets, but the job is not done quite yet. Thank you to the team for a good analysis and a perfectly well-executed quali in the garage."
Lando Norris: "Overall I think it was a decent quali considering it was my first time here in Monaco in F1. I struggled in FP3, perhaps we went in slightly the wrong direction, so went back to what we had on Thursday. It was a little bit of an unknown in terms of how the car was going to change but I had an idea from Thursday.
"I made a small mistake in Turn One on my final push lap which effectively cost me going in to Q3. I didn't do it when it counted and that was my mistake. We made good improvements and maybe I wasn't as confident compared to at some other tracks."
Andreas Seidl, Team Principal: "Well done to the team and our drivers for recovering well from FP3 which didn't look that great. With the changes we made to our cars from FP2 to FP3, we somehow lost ground to our rivals in terms of pace. Both drivers struggled with grip and traction and weren't happy with the balance of the car. The engineers did a great job staying calm, reverting back to settings from Thursday and adjusting the car to the different track conditions for quali. The car gave our two drivers a lot more confidence in quali and allowed them to push throughout, ending up in P9 and P12.
"In his first ever Monaco F1 qualifying, Lando unfortunately missed Q3 by just over a tenth, which is the nature of the game with the midfield being so tight. Carlos went through to Q3 in Monaco for the fifth time, which is quite remarkable this time considering he lost the entire FP1 session on Thursday. We now switch our focus to preparing for the race. We had good long-run pace in FP2, which should allow us to fight for good points tomorrow."
Check out our Saturday gallery from Monaco, here.