Haas
Haas had a quiet opening session, opting not to run the softs and thus finding themselves relatively down the order. In the early evening session, they both moved forward but not by as much as they might have hoped. Will they go well here? Hulkenberg’s qualifying has been top drawer this year, but they might need something special from the German tomorrow if they want to get involved at a track where the top five teams seem to be competitive.
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Nico Hulkenberg – FP1: 1:13.576, P16; FP2: 1:12.569, P15
“It’s quite something – for the first few laps you’re just stunned at how impressive it is – how fast, how dynamic, and how challenging. That’s Friday in the bag, I think it was an okay day, there were no problems on our side. Performance-wise, it didn’t look too great where we slotted in but it’s all fine margins, so we need to squeeze a little bit more out overnight for tomorrow. The picture we have today, we’re a bit away from the top 10 at the moment, but it didn’t feel too bad from a balance point of view. It’s just lacking grip in some areas, so we’ll see what we can do.”
Kevin Magnussen – FP1: 1:13.390, P14; FP2: 1:12.473, P13
“It’s incredibly tight as always, I say that all the time now, and this race is all about qualifying so it’s really important we get things right tomorrow. There’s a good rear in the car, the big rear wing is important here, but everyone came to Monaco with an extra high downforce wing. You’re just finding lap time all the time; the track is so bumpy and it’s just that much more intimidating driving around here. It requires bravery to really pull everything out of it and I don’t think anyone has done that yet. It’s very easy to go over the limit, and it’s very costly. I’d love a bit more pace of course, but we’ll see what we can do.”
Ayao Komatsu, Team Principal
“I think it’s been pretty similar to what we expected so far. I think overall in terms of the package we have for Monaco, it’s doing what it’s supposed to do but like I said earlier in the week, we just need to find a bit more from our car balance to be able to extract performance. We understand our long-run pace so I’m not too worried, but of course qualifying is everything here, so we need to find a slightly better balance.”
