Renault lack extra grip needed at Monaco
Today’s qualifying session saw Renault F1 Team drivers Fernando Alonso and Nelson Piquet qualify in 9th and 12th places respectively for tomorrow’s Monaco Grand Prix. The team is rather disappointed with the outcome of the qualifying session in the streets of Monaco after the good result earlier today in the free practice session.
FREE PRACTICE 3
Fernando Alonso: 24 laps, P10, 1:15.165 on lap 21
Run 1: 7 laps, new hard tyres
Run 2: 7 laps, same set of hard tyres, change to weight distribution
Run 3: 8 laps, new soft tyres
Nelson Piquet: 27 laps, P15, 1:16.382 on lap 25
Run 1: 10 laps, new hard tyres
Run 2: 8 laps, new hard tyres, change to front wing
Run 3: 7 laps, new soft tyres
QUALIFYING
Fernando Alonso P9, 1:16.009
Q1: 1 run on new hard tyres, 1 run on new soft tyres
Q2: 2 runs on new soft tyres
Q3: 1 run on used soft tyres, 2 runs on new soft tyres
Fernando: “Overall I’m happy with my performance as I did the best I could today. At the end of the session I was caught in a line of traffic, but honestly our ninth place reflects where our car is at the moment because I was 12th in Q1 and 9th in Q2. It’s clear that we still need to improve and find more speed.”
Nelson Piquet, P12, 1:15.837
Q1: 2 runs on new soft tyres
Q2: 2 runs on new soft tyres
Nelson: “I’m not totally happy because my ideal lap would have put me in the top ten. However, the car wasn’t perfect and I didn’t have the ideal brake balance which made it difficult to get the most from the car. If you had said to me before the weekend that we would have this result, I think I would have been relatively satisfied and starting 12th is not too bad. Now we need to concentrate on making the most of the strategy tomorrow.”
Pat Symonds, Executive Director of Engineering: “A disappointing qualifying session for us. The car seemed well balanced this morning, but this afternoon it lacked that little bit of extra grip that we needed.”
