Toro Rosso has a decent day on Thursday free practice at Monaco

Daniil Kvyat (STR11-03, Car 26)

First Practice Session
Best lap: 1:16.426, pos. 6th, 37 laps

Second Practice Session
Best lap: 1:15.815, pos. 5th, 53 laps

“I think it was a decent day for us in the office today. We completed many useful laps and we had a very consistent day here in Monaco. We now have plenty of things to look at tonight and tomorrow, as well as analysing everything before qualifying and the race. I think that overall we are looking quite good, there is good potential for us, and I’d say that if we do our homework well we can have a strong weekend. It was the first time that we used the Ultrasoft tyres today and they felt okay; we just need to look into the data from the practice session in order to understand this compound well and extract the most out of it.”

Carlos Sainz (STR11-01, Car 55)

First Practice Session
Best lap: 1:17.130, pos. 10th, 39 laps

Second Practice Session
Best lap: 1:15.981, pos. 6th, 54 laps

“I enjoyed it a lot out there today! To have a smooth Thursday in Monaco is always important in order to build-up your confidence for the rest of the weekend. The track is really fast compared to last year and the lap times are coming down nicely… It feels like we’re pushing the Formula 1 cars back to really challenging times! I was a bit surprised with the amount of degradation on the Ultrasofts, which won’t be easy to handle, but it will be the same for everyone and we will see what we can do in the race. We were able to complete our programme and had no issues throughout the day, so we can be pretty happy with our start to the Monaco Grand Prix.”

Phil Charles (Chief Race Engineer): “Quite a productive day today for us. Both drivers have performed well, building their pace and reducing their margins nicely through the day. In fact, I think Carlos and Daniil achieved a good balance, as we haven’t left much Toro Rosso blue bodywork paint on the walls… Although we have left a little bit of black wheel paint! I hope they can maintain this level for the rest of the weekend. As usual, the traffic in Monaco is very difficult to manage. The track never seems big enough for the number of cars! It is also true that both of our drivers have found frustration on key laps today.

So, as is customary here, we will need to work hard to be proactive in finding their gaps for qualifying. To this end, the engineers will study today’s footage again tomorrow, along with the drivers, to make sure they can be as well prepared as possible for Saturday. On the engineering side, we have learnt quite a bit. In particular, we split the mapping of the Super Soft and Soft tyres across the drivers in both FP1 and FP2. They both collected some good data so hopefully we will be able to make some good conclusions that will stand us in good stead for the rest of the weekend.”

Scuderia Toro Rosso