admitting that \u201cnothing\u2019s clicking\u201d<\/a> for him as he settled for a distant sixth place almost four tenths adrift of the Italian.<\/p>\nKimi Antonelli, 1st, 1:12.051<\/p>\n
“Pole position in Monaco is an incredible result. The team did an amazing job to get the car in a good place, particularly with the improvements we made overnight after a difficult Friday. It was such a tight fight out there with so many other cars and drivers that looked capable of taking P1. I am delighted to come away with pole therefore and I\u2019m already looking forward to tomorrow.<\/p>\n
“Qualifying wasn\u2019t completely straightforward at the start. The car felt a bit on edge but as the session went on, everything started to come together. We made the right adjustments, and I felt much more comfortable with where the car was by the time we got to Q3. That gave me the confidence to really push when it mattered.<\/p>\n
“That final segment of the session was extremely tense and you never quite know what to expect. Finding those last few tenths is never easy, especially with Max (Verstappen) so close all the way through. It really came down to nailing the lap at the right moment and I\u2019m very pleased we were able to do that.<\/p>\n
“To be on pole here means a lot, but at the same time, it\u2019s only the first step. I know who\u2019s around me on the grid, and I\u2019m sure they\u2019ll be putting on the pressure from the very start. The focus now is on getting a strong launch and managing the race from there. We\u2019ve shown good pace all weekend, which gives me confidence, but Monaco is always unpredictable. I\u2019ll try to stay calm, make the most of the opportunity, and see what we can achieve tomorrow.”<\/p>\n
George Russell, 6th, 1:12.445<\/p>\n
“This has been a very challenging weekend for me so far and that continued into qualifying. It has been a bit of a weakness of mine recently and unfortunately it didn\u2019t click this weekend. There were a few good laps across the hour, and FP3 had been promising, but those moments were too few and far between. You need full confidence in the grip level you are getting, particularly around here, and I didn\u2019t quite have that.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s been a frustrating run for me recently and I need to understand why I am struggling to get the tyres working in the way they need to be. Clearly something in my driving style isn\u2019t helping deliver what I need to; it worked well last year but these new generations of car may need something slightly different. I don\u2019t have a clear answer just yet but will work hard with the team to get on top of it.<\/p>\n
“Looking ahead to tomorrow, it could be a long afternoon starting from P6. That said, it\u2019s Monaco and anything can happen so we will stay optimistic and see what we can do.”<\/p>\n
Toto Wolff, Head of Mercedes-Benz Motorsport<\/p>\n
“That was an exciting qualifying session and a fantastic lap by Kimi to take pole position. There were many challengers, including the Ferraris and the Red Bulls, but Kimi found something extra when it mattered and delivered with full commitment. It\u2019s been seven years since we\u2019ve been on pole position here and historically, we\u2019ve not been very strong in Monaco. That makes today\u2019s result even more special.<\/p>\n
“On George\u2019s side, he has just not been as comfortable in the car this weekend. He has not felt the grip and therefore not had the confidence to push as much as you need to. That is particularly challenging in Monaco where confidence is one of the most important factors for unlocking lap time. We know the ability he has though and it is only a matter of time before he bounces back. He has a great group of people around him and everyone is fully behind him. We\u2019re supporting him every step of the way, and we\u2019re confident he\u2019ll come back stronger.”<\/p>\n
Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director<\/p>\n
“Well done to Kimi and the team on a well-deserved Monaco pole position. It is by far the hardest session of the year to navigate but he did a great job of building sensibly throughout and then saving the best until last with a brilliant final lap.<\/p>\n
“After our struggles on Friday, we had engineers working overnight on the simulator and they found a useful direction that gave the car a bit more stability and predictability. FP3 started well and George was immediately on the pace. Soon both drivers were setting decent lap times and reporting that the balance had improved. We therefore did very little to the cars going into qualifying.<\/p>\n
“On the early laps, both struggled with the circuit having lost a bit of grip and we had a generally messy balance. As the track improved, so did the car for Kimi and by the latter stages he looked like he was in the mix. Unfortunately for George it was an uphill struggle with the tyres never feeling like they were really biting. We’re trying to understand why such similar set-ups yielded such different feeling for the two drivers and will work through that in the days to come.<\/p>\n
“For now, we need to turn our attentions to the race tomorrow. Starting from pole is only the first step to achieving a good result at Monaco. It’s always a long and unpredictable race and there are many situations that we need to protect against if we can win tomorrow. Clearly the goal will be to move George up the field and keep Kimi where he is, but in Monaco that’s often easier said than done.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mercedes Antonelli was unbeatable in FP3, becoming the first driver to set a time under 1m 13s as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":720665,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-720664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=720664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720664\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/720665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=720664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=720664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=720664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}