Planet-F1

Thurs: Force India, Toro Rosso

Thursday 22nd May 2008

Once again Force India and Toro Rosso fought amongst themselves to not finish at the bottom of the timesheets.

Force India:
Giancarlo Fisichella: I was quite happy with today and am looking forward to qualifying on Saturday. Apart from a small problem in the last session that stopped me from doing my new tyre run, I was quite happy with the set up and the balance. We're working well around the track but we will have to see what happens over the weekend as the weather could change and the track conditions too."

Adrian Sutil: It was interesting free practice. Obviously the track is a street circuit so you take some time to get used to it and also for the track to get some rubber back on it. In general it was OK, but we have a few problems with the understeer on the car again and the same procedure with the tyres as in all the previous events - it is very difficult to get the tyres to work well. The long runs are quite quick and I am quite happy about it but over the shorter runs we have to work with the tyres a bit more. I think though with a bit of work we can be quite competitive over the weekend."

Toro Rosso:
Sebastien Bourdais: This morning when I woke up, I thought, 'this is it, I'm finally going to drive Monaco in an F1 car!' It was a case of finding out about the new car which was always going to be difficult on this demanding track. We always ran with a heavy fuel load so we should not read anything into the lap times. We are not where we want to be but I don't think we are as far behind as it might look. However, I was expecting us to be in slightly better shape than this, which means Saturday and Sunday are going to be interesting. We are lacking a bit of grip, maybe because we lack a little downforce in this maximum downforce set-up, which our top speeds would also suggest. At least my past experience here has been a help and this morning I got into a rhythm quite quickly."

Sebastian Vettel: Certainly not the best first two sessions of a race weekend. It is the first time we have had the new car at a race, so it was always going to be difficult to know what to expect and I seemed to struggle a lot. I was fighting with the car on a circuit that I have always liked in the past. I have nothing against street circuits; quite the opposite in fact. We were struggling to find the right direction to go in, but by the end of the second session we made a step forward but it is not yet enough."