Planet-F1

Thurs: McLaren, Williams, Ferrari, BMW

Thursday 22nd May 2008

Lewis Hamilton set the pace in Thursday's practice for the Monaco GP while Williams, Ferrari and BMW all featured in the top six.

McLaren
Lewis Hamilton: I simply love Monaco and enjoy every single moment I get to spend on the track. The car felt great almost immediately and I was able to show a good pace from the very beginning. As the circuit evolved throughout both practice sessions we made some good progress with both the set-up and tyre evaluation. I spent the first session on the same set of tyres. There is a long way to go, but I enjoy this so much and we will work hard to continue making progress."

Heikki Kovalainen: A positive start to the Monaco Grand Prix weekend, and I am confident there is still more to come. Towards the end of the second session when I put on a new set of tyres we had made some set-up changes which were not as positive as we thought they would be. In addition I wasn't pleased with my lap, so I am confident that we will continue to improve in Saturday's practice session. It's always great to drive around this track, and it's almost impossible to describe what it feels like. I can't wait for the rest of the Monaco Grand Prix."

Williams:
Nico Rosberg: First of all, it's really nice to be driving here again because it's just a really fun track. I was looking forward to this weekend because I thought we were going to have a good car here and it now looks like we've arrived with a good set-up. I was going well all day and felt comfortable in the car. I am also able to push quite hard so I'm hoping that I can keep it up do a good job in qualifying and then have a good race. We worked on a few set-up variants today. We didn't finish the session using our optimum set-up, but we know where we need to go and we still have some reserves up our sleeves, so I am pretty happy with how things are looking."

Kazuki Nakajima: It wasn't an easy day for me, but I think we've made some improvements when it comes to understanding the car and I'm getting used to the track as well. Because of the free day tomorrow, we have lots of time to go through today's data which will help us prepare for qualifying."

Ferrari
Kimi Raikkonen: I would say this was a normal day of free practice. We went quite well, especially on used tyres in the morning. But we struggled a bit to do a time on new tyres in the second session and now we have to look at the data carefully to understand how to improve. There is plenty of time to do that and so I am not particularly worried, at least at the moment. A wet race? It would make matters complicated but it would be the same for everyone."

Felipe Massa: Our rivals are very strong here, even allowing for the unknown factor of fuel loads. I wasn't able to do a good lap on the soft tyres, but things went well on the hard ones: we have to study the situation calmly and try to get all the details right. If we compare today with the same time last year, I think we have made a step forward. We have changed the settings on the car compared to the past and now we hope we will see the benefits of this choice."

BMW
Robert Kubica: The two practice sessions were quite ok today. It was a very busy Thursday and we covered a lot of laps. We now have to see how we can improve the car for Saturday."

Nick Heidfeld: In the first session I realised the engine was losing power, so then looked to find a good spot to stop. Of course the failure cost us running time and data, but we still managed to make several changes to the car for the second session. It was a general improvement. Taking into account it is Monaco, I would say my car is very driveable."