Toro Rosso: Sainz and Kvyat satisfied, but realistic

« Gaining a second during the day, on such a short track (3.3 km), is really good », said the Spaniard, all smiles, on the Red Bull barge docked in the Monaco port. « The car was working well, it gave me confidence, and I enjoyed myself. As soon as I left the pits, we looked at the times and I saw that I was immediately in the Top 10, or even in the Top 5 at times. »

The son of the double world rally champion was satisfied with his day but realistic: « Saturday, it would be very surprising if we were still ahead of the Mercedes. I think we will be fighting with the Williams and Force India instead. We don’t know why things are going so well here, as it’s the same car as in Barcelona and we haven’t changed the settings much. Whatever the tire choice, we were close to the others. I don’t think we can aim for the podium on Sunday, but there are always surprises in Monaco. I am especially eager to see where we are on Saturday in qualifying. These are only the first two free practice sessions and I don’t think we will make many changes by Saturday unless we see something special in the data analysis. And I hope the others will continue to struggle… », concluded Sainz Jr before going to take a well-deserved shower.

As often, his Russian colleague Daniil Kvyat was more reserved, even though he did even better: 6th in FP1 and 4th in FP2, completing over 80 laps without the slightest problem: « We did a good job today, but we need to remain vigilant about the areas we can still improve on, even if we were a bit ahead of the others. We changed the settings on my car compared to the Barcelona qualifiers, as we had completely gotten it wrong, and it’s going much better for us. I’m very happy with the overall balance. Every lap was useful, and we have a lot of data to analyze by Saturday. We will need to work hard to maintain this level until the end of the weekend. »

The final word goes to James Key, the excellent technical director of the Faenza team: « It was a productive day, especially after our problems in Barcelona where we brought a lot of improvements without necessarily understanding everything. We have a better understanding of how to improve the balance of our cars and were able to find finer settings in the second session. Our tire program was a bit different from other teams, and we will continue to optimize everything by looking at the data on Friday. »

This is one of the big advantages of Monaco, in addition to the glamour and the sunshine: there is a full day off on Friday for the F1 teams, allowing the bravest in the paddock to get a lot of work done. Stay tuned for Saturday afternoon, for what promises to be very lively qualifying sessions…

From our special correspondent in Monaco