25/05/2017
NEWS STORY
Sahara Force India completed 163 laps of practice today in preparation for Sunday's Monaco Grand Prix.
Sergio Perez: "Finishing in the top ten in both sessions is a good result, especially considering I am not feeling fully comfortable with the car yet. We have a lot of work to do before qualifying, but I am confident we can extract more performance and be really strong on Saturday. It hasn't been easy to get the tyres into the right window today and this makes it very hard around a place like this where there is no margin for error. We have time tonight and tomorrow to analyse all the data and ensure we can get our set-up right for qualifying and the race."
Esteban Ocon: "It was my first experience of Monaco from inside the cockpit and I am impressed. To be here for the first time in an F1 car is not easy, but I was able to do a good amount of laps and learn my way around the circuit. I took it step by step in the morning and felt satisfied with what we achieved. In FP2 I tried to push a bit more and I ended up brushing the walls a couple of times. Fortunately there was no significant damage and I could carry on with our programme. I am looking forward to being back in the car on Saturday and seeing where we stand in qualifying."
Robert Fernley: "We started FP1 pretty well and the drivers were immediately comfortable with the balance of the car. We tried a slightly different direction in FP2 and things didn't really improve, so we will need to look at the changes we made to understand how to move forward for Saturday. Esteban had to get up to speed with a new circuit and he went very close to the limit at times, but that's part of his learning process around this track. We were able to do a lot of mileage with the softer compounds and we also tried some new parts, which seem to be working as expected. Now it's a matter of extracting some more potential from the car during FP3 and focussing on qualifying performance."
Check out our Thursday gallery from Monaco, here.