The Red Bull team, with Australian Daniel Ricciardo setting the best time in the second practice sessions, watched over the dominance of the Mercedes on the first day of the Monaco Grand Prix, with the Toro Rosso surprising with their good records and Ferrari suffering.
A time of the Australian driver of 1: 14.607 in the second session, up on the ultra-soft tires that in this race the manufacturer Pirelli premieres and about two tenths of the circuit record – in possession of seven times German champion Michael Schumacher since 2004 – confirmed that the engine modification that the Milton Keynes team debuted with Ricciardo was good.
So good that the Mercedes – who dominated the first round with the British Lewis Hamilton followed by the World Cup leader, the German Nico Rosberg – failed to lower the Australian’s record from half a second. However, Ricciardo and Red Bull do not rule out that the ‘silver arrows’ have an ace up their sleeve.
“It seems to me that they can be faster. Although it seems like a great distance, I don’t know if they will be able to overcome it, ”Ricciardo distrusted in his statements to the media after the second qualifying session.
He is right, as the German team has not yet failed on a qualifying Saturday – three poles for Hamilton and two for Rosberg in the five races of the season.
In fact, Hamilton outscored his rivals by nearly half a second in the first round – 4 tenths to Ferrari German Sebastian Vettel and almost eight to Ricciardo, with Rosberg trailing by one or two tenths in both sessions. No trace of controversy between the two after the crash that left them out of action in Montmeló.
The threat of Red Bull was completed with the good performance in both goals of the Dutch Max Verstappen. The fashionable Formula One boy, after his triumphant start in the German team with the victory in the Spanish Grand Prix, was fifth in the first round and fourth in the second.
Behind the first team of the Austrian structure were placed during the second session the surprising Toro Rosso cars, with the Russian Daniil Kvyat fifth, vindicating himself two weeks after being demoted from Red Bull to the second team; and the Spanish Carlos Sainz in sixth place, although he came to lead the batch at the start. In the first session, Kvyat had been sixth and Sainz, tenth.
Where they don’t end up finding their best version is at Ferrari. The Maranello team placed four-time German champion Sebastian Vettel in third place in the first session; but in the second the German was ninth, expertly saving his car from an almost certain collision with the walls. Finn Kimi Raikkonen (2007 world champion) was ninth in the first session and seventh in the second.
The McLaren-Honda team, which aims at Monte Carlo to be in the last qualifying round (Q3) on Saturday, placed the British Jenson Button, champion in 2009, in that position – eleventh – in the second session, in which the two-time champion Spanish Fernando Alonso was twelfth. In the first round, Spanish was thirteenth and English fifteenth.
It was a good day for Mexican Sergio Pérez (Force India), eighth in both sessions, while his compatriot Esteban Gutiérrez (Haas) made a fourteenth and thirteenth place in the two practices of the day.
The day on the Monte Carlo urban circuit was marked by accidents, on a route in which the proximity of the walls is critical. The main victims were the Renault team cars, with an accident involving the British Jolyon Palmer in the first session and another involving the Danish Kevin Magunssen in the second.
The Brazilian Felipe Massa (Ferrari) and the Indonesian Rio Haryanto (Manor) also suffered accidents, which forced the organization to remove their cars with a crane, given the few options offered by the urban circuit to remove a crashed car.
Next Saturday, after the Friday of rest for the feast of Santa Devota, the real options of Red Bull will be seen to challenge Mercedes or the continuity of the dominance of the Germans, in a circuit in which the classification is more definitive than in none due to the difficulties to overtake in Monte Carlo. EFE
Red Bull stalks Mercedes in Monaco, Toro Rosso surprises and Ferrari suffers
