Mercedes ended Friday’s Monaco GP of Formula 1 with the feeling that they will have a lot of work to do to compete for the top positions over the weekend. Although they found improvement between practice sessions, the team acknowledges that they are still behind Ferrari and were also surprised by Red Bull Racing’s performance.
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George Russell highlighted that the team managed to improve from FP1 to FP2, but believes it will be necessary to repeat this progress overnight to enter the fight for pole position and victory. According to him, the Principality’s street circuit was already internally pointed out as the biggest challenge of the season so far.
The Briton stated that Ferrari’s strength was not a surprise: “We expected Ferrari to be ahead because historically they have always been strong here. Their cars, especially from a mechanical point of view, seem to adapt very well to this type of track,” he said. Still, Russell admitted that Red Bull’s competitiveness caught his team’s attention. Even so, he believes there is performance to be found in the Mercedes car: “We have some ideas about where we can improve and we know there is still lap time to extract. If we execute everything perfectly and commit 100%, we hope to get there,” he said.
Kimi Antonelli also described a complicated Friday. The Italian revealed that he had difficulties mainly in the intermediate sector of the track, a factor that limited his pace throughout the activities. Despite this, he highlighted that the team tested various configurations and gathered important information to guide adjustments before FP3 and the qualifying session.
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Like Russell, Antonelli sees Ferrari in a privileged position for the rest of the weekend: “We know they are normally strong in Monaco and certainly look like the favorites for tomorrow. We haven’t put the car in the ideal operating window yet, so we hope to take a step forward and get into the fight,” he added.
Mercedes’ trackside engineering director, Andrew Shovlin, reinforced that the team arrived in the Principality with moderate expectations, as they haven’t had good weekends in Monaco for some time. According to him, the tests carried out between the two cars in FP1 helped generate a solid data base for the rest of the schedule.
Shovlin assessed that, in FP2, both cars were in a reasonable performance range, but still behind the Ferraris and Max Verstappen’s Red Bull in terms of single-lap pace. Even so, the director considered the W17’s behavior positive, stating that the car seems more suited to Monaco’s characteristics than its predecessors and offers room for further developments before the qualifying session.
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