A good day for Virgin Racing at Monaco
Virgin Racing enjoyed a productive day at Monaco with no major issues with the cars. The drivers were pleased with the performance, and in the end both are where they were expected to be. Both drivers will face an interesting challenge tomorrow as they start ahead of Fernando Alonso.
The principality of Monte Carlo was bathed in glorious sunlight this morning, on the first day of this year's Monaco Grand Prix, a refreshing surprise as everyone had been expecting rain and low temperatures. Rain was still being predicted for early afternoon though, even if it seemed hard to believe when looking at the sky.
Somewhat unexpectedly, the first free practice session was relatively incident free and Timo Glock finished as fastest driver of the new teams. Lucas di Grassi also put in an excellent performance, trading times with Timo until finishing the session slightly early in order to make some changes to the gearbox.
Temperatures dropped for the second session, and the rain gradually began to put in an appearance. This compromised some of the team’s running on the faster option tyre, but both Lucas and Timo put in very competitive times.
The track temperature peaked at 41°C and the ambient high was 22°C.
Timo Glock, Race Driver #24
“Today was quite good with the car, no major problems. In Free Practice 2 we struggled a bit with the gearbox - the seamless shift wasn’t working in that session which was a bit of a shame, but in general, no problems and we found a good set-up. Let’s see what happens on Saturday and fight hard with Lotus again and see where we are.”
Lucas di Grassi, Race Driver #25
“It was a very good day, despite running with the old car. I felt comfortable straight away with the way the car was behaving here in Monaco. I think we are closer to the other teams than we were in Barcelona and in Free Practice 2 I was able to finish ahead of one of the Lotus cars and do a lot of laps. We had a small issue in Free Practice 1, no problems at all in Free Practice 2, so I’m very confident we can have a strong qualifying on Saturday. It’s a very important race here and we have to qualify well here and finish the race.”
Nick Wirth, Technical Director
“A very productive day for the team. Lucas experienced a gearbox issue this morning in P1 which shortened his first session, whereas Timo had a positive set of runs. In P2, Lucas made clear progress with his setup, but sadly got the timing of his new option tyre run to coincide precisely with the rain shower! Timo had a gearbox sensor failure at the beginning of P2 which degraded his shifts and lost him time all session, plus his option tyre running was also done during the start of the shower. Nevertheless, we have gathered a good amount of data on both cars, and we look forward to putting it all together, along with some new aero parts arriving tonight, when we start again Saturday.”
