2021 Monaco Grand Prix – Thursday

TYRE GAP

THURSDAY TYRE SUMMARY

• Ferrari was the team to beat in free practice, with Charles Leclerc edging out his team mate Carlos Sainz in the afternoon FP2 session – the only drivers dipping below the 1m12s barrier ­– while Red Bull’s Sergio Perez topped the time sheets in FP1. They all used the P Zero Red soft tyre to set their best times, with the softest compound in the range (called ‘C5’) making its 2021 debut at Monaco this weekend.
• Temperatures were warm and dry all day with track temperatures peaking at 45 degrees centigrade during the afternoon FP2 session. This helped the drivers to maintain tyre temperature, although as usual finding a gap in the Monaco traffic was a challenge.
• The performance gap between the tyre compounds is as expected so far: with around 0.8 seconds between the hard and the medium, and a similar gap between the medium and soft.

FORMULA 2: LATEST NEWS

Formula 2 got underway with free practice followed by qualifying, which for Monaco only is split into two 16-minute groups to minimise the perennial problem of finding a clear lap. ART Grand Prix’s Theo Pourchaire claimed the best time: unusually from the first 11-car group, which traditionally is slightly disadvantaged due to track evolution that makes the second group a bit quicker. All the drivers ran the supersoft rubber in qualifying, to extract the maximum mechanical grip on the tight and twisty circuit. UNI-Virtuosi’s Guanyu Zhou, who qualified 10^th, will start tomorrow’s opening F2 race from pole.

MARIO ISOLA – HEAD OF F1 AND CAR RACING

“The circuit was actually in good condition for FP2 in particular with significant track evolution, thanks also to the support events. We saw solid performance from all three compounds, with a similar time gap between all of them. As expected, the teams concentrated on the hard and medium in the morning followed by the medium and soft for their performance runs in the afternoon in preparation for qualifying – which of course, takes place the day after tomorrow in Monaco. This means that track conditions may be slightly different by the time we get to the crucial qualifying session – with a slight risk of rain before FP3, which might reset the asphalt conditions. Conditions were quite warm today, with track temperatures being a key influence on tyre wear and degradation, which is quite low in Monaco. As a result, we’ve seen nothing today to suggest that teams will deviate from the usual one-stopper at Monaco, with the soft and the medium preferred, judging from today’s run plans.”