Saturday in Monaco: “Car was the best it’s been so far this weekend”

Qualifying done, and P5 on the grid the result for tomorrow’s Monaco Grand Prix. What’s the battle plan for tomorrow? We ask the Iceman…

Q: How was qualifying for you?

KR: It was difficult because of the weather, but it was the same for all of the drivers. Obviously, it’s never the easiest with the traffic and the barriers and you’d always prefer it to be dry as it’s so slippery when it’s wet. I’m happy we made it through to the top ten and P5 was more or less the best we could do with seven tenths to the next fastest car.

Q: It was a bit close getting through Q1?

KR: Q1 was a bit tricky. We stopped a bit early to change the tyres so they weren’t quite up to temperature when the track was at its driest, but we made it through so no problem there.

Q: What’s the plan for tomorrow from P5?

KR: I’m not sure what we’ll do in the race; we don’t have a clear picture yet as you never know exactly what the strategies from everyone else will be, but for sure we’ll find out tomorrow. I do know that today the car was the best it’s been so far this weekend so I expect it’ll be pretty good in the race.

Q: How can you move forwards up the order when it’s so difficult to pass here?

KR: We’ll have to see what happens. You don’t know what the weather will be like and maybe another team will have issues getting their tyres to work in the race which could help us. Whatever happens, hopefully we can pick up some places and get some more championship points.

Q: Any thoughts on strategy?

KR: We can only see in the race when we know what the conditions are and what speed we have relative to our opposition. Last year there was quite bad tyre degradation in the race here so we could face the same thing again. We’ll know for sure tomorrow.