Header image by Tony Hall; interviews by Sergio Álvarez
You wouldn’t be surprised if I told you that Monaco produces dull races, you’re mostly looking forward to kamikaze overtakes and de Cesaris-Piquet style anecdotical sort of mishaps. Traffic is tough, overtaking is at a premium.
After Thursday’s qualy was done and dusted, we asked Théo Pourchaire about his views on traffic. TP must’ve been so high on potenuse from all the ‘adrelanin’ pumpin’, using Mattiacci’s lingo, that he didn’t even understand the question. We like the attitude though, just drive flat out, no doubt.
Thanks to our man TCF1 for doing a bit of explaining in the presser.
Said Théo: “Yeah, you have to be a bit lucky with traffic. Some drivers are not super clean with you but it’s part of the game. And Monaco is the most difficult track for that. It’s the job of the driver, the engineers and also the other drivers, y’know, to look around and to not block the other guys.”
Stay tuned to hear views on traffic from Robert Shwartzman and Oscar Piastri.
Rob wasn’t so lucky in Race 1 on Friday – DNF after kissing those unforgiving barriers, it’s been a pretty tricky start to the season for PREMA’s Flying F2 Russian. The roulette was decidedly Monégasque for SHW. On to the next one, never give up.
The winner, Guanyu Zhou, took it all, thank you very much! The Alpine Academy driver is on it in 2021, 56 pts to Lawson’s 30 so far, and counting.
The Chinese driver has got the grip on the championship, but what about his grid position? Did he get a good grip off the line?
“We had our (practice start) yesterday in FP, seemed to be nice and smooth. Monaco seems to be having quite good grip already from FP and today’s race obviously coming with ‘colder’ tyres compared to FP. I’m surprised everything held up pretty well and I think the grip is there for Monaco, helping with these supersofts/softs we have as well.”
Race 2 and Race 3 are on the horizon! Let Armco shake, Pirellis bake and make no mistake, the points are there to take.
More talking points from Thursday and Friday, with some mighty exclusive quotes from the drivers, will be coming to Iberianmph next week.
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