Tricky Friday in Monaco

• Track action got underway in Monte Carlo with two hours of practice on Friday ahead of this weekend’s Monaco Grand Prix.

• Both drivers used all three tyre compounds across the day, with the Hard and the Medium used in FP1 and the Medium and the Soft in FP2.

• The drivers ran slightly different set-ups for FP1 but converged for FP2; that was reflected in the times with just one tenth separating George in P4 from Kimi in P5 during that second hour of running.

• Neither George nor Kimi felt that the car was in its optimal place with an imbalance of tyre temperature across the axles and some instability in the middle sector.

• As expected ahead of the weekend, the Ferraris led the way in both sessions and look favourites to take pole position tomorrow.

• The team will work hard overnight and in FP3 tomorrow to find more time and aim to be in the fight for pole position tomorrow afternoon.

George Russell

We saw good improvements from FP1 to FP2 but if we want to be in the fight for pole and victory, we will have to take a similar step forward overnight. It is certainly shaping up to be the most challenging weekend of our season so far and tougher than we had hoped. Heading into today, we expected Ferrari to be at the front as they’ve typically been strong here. Its cars historically, particularly on the mechanical side, seem to suit these types of tracks. That is how today played out but it was surprising to see Red Bull so competitive too. We’ve got work to do to get in the mix; we have some ideas on where we can improve though, and we know there is more lap time to unlock. If we execute perfectly and commit 100%, then hopefully we can get there.

Kimi Antonelli

It was not the most straightforward Friday of the season. I struggled with the car, particularly in the middle sector and that was limiting our pace. We tried a lot of different set-up options and have gathered a lot of good data. That will help us evaluate what work to do overnight and what changes to make for FP3 and Qualifying.

Ferrari look to be in a very strong position. We know they are typically good in Monaco, and they certainly seem to be favourites for tomorrow. We know there is more time for us to find though given we didn’t get the car in its perfect sweet spot yet, so hopefully we can take a step forward and be in the mix tomorrow.

Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director

It's a long time since we had a good weekend in Monaco, so we arrived here with modest expectations. We have worked hard on our preparation to try and land our start set-up in a decent place. We also were doing some cross car compares in FP1 to give ourselves plenty of data to work through.

By FP2, we had landed both cars in a reasonable region, but our single lap pace was slightly off the Ferraris and the Red Bull of Max Verstappen. Encouragingly, we have a car that we can work with though and importantly can see some opportunity to make it quicker. We've certainly got to find a bit of pace if we want to be in the fight for the front row tomorrow, but we can take some encouragement from the fact that W17, on first impressions at least, seems a bit better suited to this track than its predecessors.

FP1 Result

FP2 Result