Team Talk - Sunday in Monaco

Sauber

Nico Hulkenberg

“I had a good start, gaining a position on the opening lap, but the rest of the race didn't unfold as we had hoped. Unfortunately, I frequently found myself caught in traffic, largely due to teams in front of us obviously executing strategic plays. Lapping three to five seconds per lap off the pace to open up pit windows for their teammates slowed me down massively and did not lead to an enjoyable race. Obviously, team plays are part of the sport, but from a racing standpoint, it was not what everyone was hoping for. Realistically, starting in the top 10 is probably the only way to avoid this, and while our own strategy and the pitstops were well executed, there was little we could do to achieve a better result.“

Gabriel Bortoleto

“Monaco has always been known for exciting qualifying and free practice sessions, but the races often end up being quite uneventful because overtaking is so difficult. Today wasn't any different, despite the sport trying something new with the tyre regulations; it didn’t really work out, and the team games that emerged made the race slow, with everyone running four or five seconds off their real pace, no tyre degradation, and overtaking impossible. My race was already in a difficult position after lap one, due to my incident with Kimi. It’s a shame because I made a solid move around the outside at the hairpin, gaining the position fairly, but then he tried a slightly optimistic move at Turn 8. He went a bit wide, and to avoid a collision with him, I ended up crashing into the wall, destroying my front wing and ultimately compromising my race. It’s frustrating because I felt that, without the incident, we could have been in a position to try playing the team game as well and maybe make some gains. Looking forward, we’ll continue working hard on the car and its set-up and, hopefully, it will help us improve our qualifying and race positions. Being consistently in Q2 or occasionally fighting for Q3 would allow us to be closer to the fight for the points."

Jonathan Wheatley, Team Principal

"The Monaco Grand Prix was defined by strategy and shaped more by the rules than by pure racing. On the opening lap, Gabriel pulled off a bold move around the outside at turn six to gain a position, but a late move from Kimi [Antonelli] at turn eight led to contact — I’d call it a racing incident. As a result, Gabriel came in for a nose and tyre change; we later switched to the softs on lap 35 when Carlos [Sainz] bunched up the field.
"With Nico, we boxed for the hard compound on lap 12 when Liam [Lawson] backed up the pack, and again for softs on lap 44 when Alex [Albon] did the same. On a circuit where overtaking is notoriously difficult, this was a race where strategy ultimately dictated the outcome — and some teams were in a position to make the most of how the adapted sporting regulations work. It was one of those days where Racing Bulls, Williams, and Mercedes were clearly playing the team game, which definitely made things tougher for us.
“While I’d say the incident between Gabriel and Kimi was just hard racing, as a sport we do need to take a closer look at George’s [Russell] penalty and consider what can be learned — especially in races so heavily influenced by mandatory tyre usage rules like this one. Next up is Barcelona, and hopefully that’ll give us more of a chance to see some proper racing.”