Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMcLaren

Button impressed by Toro Rosso pair

40

Jenson Button admits he was impressed how the two Toro Rosso drivers performed during the first two practice sessions for the Monaco Grand Prix.

Max Verstappen was second fastest in FP1 in what was his first ever session around Monaco, and followed that up with seventh fastest behind team-mate Carlos Sainz in FP2. Asked if his experience could help him recover from a lack of running on the opening day, Button replied: “You hope around here.

"I think Max Verstappen and Carlos Sainz did a great job day today with very little experience around here. We’ll see what happens in qualifying when we’re all giving it our maximum and we’ll see how we fare. But considering the running I had I’m reasonably happy with how the car feels.”

Having missed the first hour of FP1 due to an energy recovery system, Button admits he is on the back foot more than the rest of the field with rain interrupting the second session.

“You always want to run here as much as you can. Monaco is very unique, it’s a unique circuit these days. It’s somewhere you need to build up, you can’t just go straight out and go flat-out like most of the circuits these days that have a lot of run-offs. You need a lot of laps, I didn’t get a lot of laps so Saturday morning is going to be very important for me especially.”

Click here for Thursday's gallery from the Monaco Grand Prix

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter

Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.