Lewis Hamilton: I had a great first day here. Every year, it stuns me how fast we have to think out there, with so much information coming at you, and you have to be more reactive and agile than anywhere else. The target is always to get on the pace as quick as you can and to be very specific and precise in the set-up changes you make, so you don’t go down the wrong path. The balance today was not far off, so we have been tuning that with our programme, and there are still some areas to improve on. When it rained, we didn’t need to take any risks so stayed in the garage, but the lap I did at the end showed that the black paint covering the white lines is even more slippery than the lines themselves! Now we need to work well tomorrow, make the right steps forward with the car, and pick up on Saturday where we left off today.
Nico Rosberg: It’s great to be back at this legendary circuit, the car felt great. Monaco is the highlight of the year for me. We are very quick here again, so I’m quite confident for this weekend. I didn’t get it all together today, I had a lot traffic, so the next practice session on Saturday morning will be very important.
Sebastian Vettel: When it rains it’s the same for everyone, you don’t tend to run. Today the car felt ok, we wanted to test a couple more things but time went out. We have to wait and see until Saturday to understand more and we’ll only find out on Sunday how close we are to Mercedes. I think we can’t take Monaco as a reference, it’s for the nature of the track that everybody is a bit closer, but for sure I hope to reduce the gap even more. This is why everybody went out in the end of the session. There was no reason to do more laps, we don’t have unlimited tires and if the rain comes again we need them, even if the forecast looks dry. It‘s a shame we could not get an idea on the Supersoft tires but I think we will see on Saturday.
Kimi Raikkonen: The feeling with the car today was pretty ok, obviously there are some small issues but they are more related to the tyres: it’s difficult to make them warm up, especially the front tyres, but overall it’s not too bad. In order to get the tyres working, it would have been nice to see how the Supersofts work, anyway I think they are much easier. Due to the rain we couldn’t learn as much I wanted, but it was the same for everybody. We did the most that we could in these conditions. For Saturday we have to see how the weather will be, we still have some work to do on the car and make sure the tyres work well, then we’ll go from there and do the best in qualifying and in the race.
Daniel Ricciardo: The car felt good today, I think we’re more or less where we need to be and on the right track. With each passing race, we are managing issues better and if we put a good lap in for quali, we’ll hopefully be in a good position. I think some teams are catching up to Ferrari but it will still require a big effort to get in front of them. But hopefully we can get ahead of the Williams. We’ll see how we go on Saturday.
Daniil Kvyat: The car felt alright today and we are heading in a good direction I think; I did a couple of good times. Monaco is a unique track, a bit unusual and I think the package we have is working well so far. We had a limited run in second practice because of the rain, but we were able to get enough laps in the wet to get a feel for how the car handles. The re-surfacing has made the track slightly smoother and changes to the swimming pool entry are good. We have the day off tomorrow here and we’ll start again on Saturday with better weather hopefully.
Felipe Massa: It hasn’t been as productive a day as we would have liked as the rain restricted our running. Our focus is on Saturday and the forecast says no rain, so there was nothing for us to learn running in the wet. We had a good first session running on the soft tyre and will take the data we have from that. Free practice on Saturday morning will be important to get the car set-up correctly.
Valtteri Bottas: We struggled to get the soft tyre working at its optimum and missed the chance to try the supersoft due to the weather, but that is the same for everyone. We have a lot of work to do to make sure tyre temperatures are correct but have little data to go from. It was a tough day with the weather but it’s the same situation for everyone in the pitlane.
Romain Grosjean: We had a good day. Pastor was happy this morning, I was more happy with the car this afternoon. It’s a track where you really need to drive to find the best set up and we made some good progress today so I’m happy with that. Of course the rain in the afternoon wasn’t ideal to evaluate the super soft tyres but we’re going to do that on Saturday morning. Preparing for qualifying tends to be the focus at this race; no one did a long run today but I don’t think it’s very important to do one here. Saturday morning will be about prepping qualifying again and having two sets of super softs will be good!
Pastor Maldonado: The car didn’t go badly today, maybe even better than we expected. Of course, the track improves a lot lap by lap so it’s difficult to determine where you are exactly, but it was a good day even if we were interrupted by the rain in the afternoon. This meant we didn’t get time to run with the super softs, but I think we should have time on Saturday morning and it will be interesting to see how the car reacts to the softer compound. Of course, qualifying in Monaco is always very important so we’ll do our best to get the car where we want it for then.
Max Verstappen: It was a good day today. I built it up slowly in the first practice because it was all new for me, but I felt really good in the car immediately. This gave me a lot of confidence and to finish the morning session in P2 made me feel great! In the afternoon it was a bit of a shame that it rained, as we couldn’t complete as many laps as we wanted, but to still finish in P7 is not bad, I can be happy with my first day driving here in Monaco.
Carlos Sainz: I enjoyed it today and had a lot of fun out there! The first time driving a Formula 1 car in Monaco is always special and something I had been dreaming for many years. In terms of performance, we were not too bad and maybe even better than where I expected to be on my first day here. But it’s still early days and we don’t really know what the others have done. It was a shame that we couldn’t do more laps in FP2 due to the rain, because this is very important for a rookie driver like me but, all in all, the car feels good and I feel confident.
Marcus Ericsson: In the morning session the concern was on the set-up side. We were not able to complete as many laps as I would have liked. But the kilometers that we drove took us forward from run to run with regard to the speed and confidence in the Sauber C34-Ferrari. At the beginning of the afternoon session an ERS problem occurred and, therefore, the second free practice session was over for me. That’s a shame, but the disadvantage is very limited due to the rain – anyway not many laps would have been possible. I am still looking forward to the weekend.
Felipe Nasr: It was not an easy day for us. In the morning it was difficult to get the front tyres to work properly. This was influenced by cooler temperatrues and also a lack of downforce. In FP2 we did a couple of laps before the rain started. We identified that our main limitation at the moment is not a lot of traction. We need to improve that for Saturday.
