Alonso says driving Monaco is 'stressful'

I caught up with Fernando Alonso this afternoon at his press briefing in the Renault motorhome.

I caught up with Fernando Alonso this afternoon at his press briefing in the Renault motorhome. He's one of the few drivers to do this session on the first day of practice.

I was interested to hear how good it felt to be back on the streets here, brushing the barriers, feeling that unique adrenalin rush of Monaco. His answer surprised me a little,

"Not feeling good because being close to the barriers is not something you enjoy too much it's a bit stressful. It's always nice to be at Monaco and you get a different feeling, but it's very demanding in terms of concentration in terms of how precise you are with your lines etc, because a little mistake and you finish your session. On Thursday you need to do as many laps as possible, so from a driving point of view you need to start risking, improve some racing lines, but you need to allow some margin because you want to do as many laps as possible."

Today went pretty well for the team. Alonso wound up 11th, but he set his fastest time on the eighth lap of a 12 lap run on used soft tyres, so his time is not particularly representative of his outright pace. He thinks that with a bit of luck, a clear track and a bold lap he might squeeze into a slot on the front three rows of the grid.

"Top five, top six will be the absolute maximum. Maybe a more normal result will be fighting for the last couple of points. It's a good opportunity for us to fight against teams we cannot fight on normal circuits. We know that when we get to Turkey we will be between position eight and position ten, more or less. So here is a bit different. Maybe here the position changes, if you have a good lap in qualifying, if you are close to the barriers, everything goes perfectly on your lap then maybe you start fourth in the race and you can keep that position."

Today was more about the drivers getting comfortable with the car and the track than anything else, doing as many laps as possible to get into the groove. The circuit changes a lot here over a weekend as the rubber goes down. But already we saw how fast these cars are with the slick tyres and improved mechanical grip compared with last season. the fastest time today was a 1m15.243, which is only a tenth slower than the fastest low fuel time in qualifying from last year. So I reckon we will see some very fast times on Saturday.

"The set up was good more or less straight away," says Alonso. "We tried not to change too many things on the car because the circuit keeps changing on every run, improving and improving when you put some rubber down. It's quite clear for everyone that supersoft tyre will be better for qualifying for the one lap performance and the soft tyre will be better for the race with better consistency."

Alonso got the maximum out of the car in Spain, finishing fifth behind the Brawns and the Red Bulls. He's punching well above the car's weight this season, so keep an eye out for him on Saturday.

He finished by reiterating his comments from yesterday about not wanting to drive in F1 if the manufacturers pull out at the end of this season,

"If all the manufacturers retire from F1, it's not any more F1. It's not about technology, it's not about improvement it's not about the maximum category in motorsport. I won't consider driving in a category that is not the maximum of technology."

The teams meet tomorrow morning to discuss the situation with the budget cap and then they meet again at 4pm with Max Mosley. With a week until entries open for the 2010 championship it will be a time for cutting to the chase.