| The weather at Monaco for the morning Practice session was warm with air and track temperatures of 22° and 40° respectively. For Louis Delétraz this would be his first drive on the Monte Carlo circuit whilst Gustav Malja had raced here last year which given the shorter than usual Qualifying session would be an advantage. Pirelli are supplying their P Zero Yellow soft and P Zero Red supersoft compounds to the teams this weekend due to the relatively low speeds at this narrow and twisty circuit.
Louis was the second car out on track while Gustav was one of the last as the cars were already looking for space on the track to allow them a clear run for their flying lap. The first fast lap for Louis saw him go 2nd with a lap of 1:26.508 but the lap times were falling fast and Gustav was setting some quick times and he went 4th on 1:24.641. Louis immediately improved on his seventh lap to 1:23.605 to lie 2nd again but Gustav then passed him as he reduced his time to 1:23.138. With fifteen minutes gone both the Racing Engineering cars went faster still with Gustav on 1:22.532 and Louis on 1:22.681, then as the session reached the twenty-minute point, Louis returned to the pits for some set-up adjustments to be followed a few minutes later by Gustav.
Louis returned to the track with eighteen minutes still to go and Gustav joined him two minutes later with both cars fitted with the Pirelli P Zero Red supersoft tyres and Louis immediately improved to 1:21.987 and then Gustav went a little faster to lie 10th with a time of 1:21.305. Louis returned to the pits with ten minutes of the session remaining and he was quickly followed by Gustav. Louis and Gustav were back on the track with four minutes left but a Virtual Safety Car test meant that they were unable to improve their lap times.
The afternoon Qualifying session was split into two sixteen minute sessions with one car from each team in each session, for Racing Engineering Louis would be in Group A and Gustav in Group B. The weather was a little warmer than in the morning with air and track temperatures of 22° and 43° respectively and all the cars were on the Pirelli P Zero Red supersoft tyres. Louis was in the first Qualifying group and the young Swiss driver’s first flying lap was a 1:24.041 for 5th position and he then returned to the pits after four laps for some set-up tweaks and new supersoft tyres from the Racing Engineering team. Louis was quickly back on track where he improved to 1:21.851 for 3rd, he then reduced this to 1:21.592 to finish the session in 9th.
Gustav took to the track just a few minutes after the end of the previous session and his first flying lap was a 1:23.459 to lead the timing sheet before pitting for new tyres, returning to the track with nine minutes to go and he made a big improvement to reduce his time to 1:20.469 for 4th. A final quick lap of 1:20.282 saw the Swedish driver finish the session in 6th.
Tomorrow’s Feature Race will see Gustav start from 12th on the grid and he will be fighting hard to score as many points as possible and to get a good grid position for Sunday’s Race. Louis will be staring from 17th and it will be hard for him to get into the points on such a tight circuit but that won’t stop him giving everything he can. |
