2024 Monaco Grand Prix Qualifying

Sven Smeets, Alex Albon & Logan Sargeant react after Qualifying

Published

25 MAY 2024

Est. reading time

3 min

Sven Smeets, Sporting Director: Free Practice this morning was all about learning how to bring the Soft tyre into the right window for Qualifying runs. As always in Monaco, Q1 is very busy and you need to be a bit lucky with traffic and start your push laps with the tyres in the right window. We managed with Alex to proceed to Q2 but unfortunately just missed out with Logan, which was a real shame. Missing some of the updates probably cost him a place in Q2. Alex delivered a great lap in Q2 that brought us for the first time into Q3 this season and we are happy to start from P9 tomorrow. Now it will be key for Alex to have a good start, stay out of trouble in those first laps and try to consolidate his good starting position into points. For Logan the race will be tough as overtaking will be difficult, but we will be ready to take every opportunity to make progress.

Alex Albon: It was great out there today; I really enjoyed those laps. We’ve had the car in a good place all weekend, however we’re still struggling a little with understeer in Sector 2, so we’ve made some changes throughout the day to try get on top of it. It was all about getting the tyres in the right window, so we chose clean air, focusing on the tyres and not worrying about the track evolution as much. Looking to tomorrow, graining might be a problem, so we’ll have to manage this throughout the race. Hopefully, I can get some clean air and look after the tyres. On paper, this track is the least weight penalising of the year, so it’s allowed us to play on a slightly more level playing field. For the team, I think with Logan not having the upgrades and with a slightly alternate setup, it was potentially the difference in him making it into Q2.

Logan Sargeant: It was a good session for us. I’ve been driving well since FP1 and I was really happy with my laps in Qualifying – I felt like I got everything out of the package I had today. Obviously, we’ve been open that we have some cross-car differences this weekend and I can only expect quite a bit of the difference is coming from that. It is tough to overtake here but we need to focus on ourselves, try to have clean stints and see what we can do tomorrow. Monaco is one of the most special tracks to drive. To sit in an F1 car and pull out of the garage for Qualifying is like no other and to be able to put the car on the edge like that is everything we dream of so it’s a pleasure to drive here.

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