Sainz surprised by Monaco challenge

Carlos Sainz admits he has been surprised by how difficult he found driving in Monaco in an F1 car on Thursday.

The young Spaniard has previously driven on the circuit in Formula Renault 3.5 but the opening two practice sessions marked his first time in an F1 car. Sainz admits the struggles he had with getting heat in the soft tyre - a problem faced by many drivers - made the challenge even more difficult than he was expecting.

"It was very tricky," Sainz said. "I didn’t expect it to be that tricky. The prime tyre is so hard in these conditions  that it’s very difficult to make it work. As soon as you do half a lap of cooling down, then you start pushing again and you don’t have the same feeling with the car. At this track it’s all about consistency and confidence and it’s very difficult to have that at the moment."

Despite his surprise, Sainz was quicker than team-mate Max Verstappen in FP2 after the Dutch driver was second in the opening session, and he says the early difference between the two was due to his own approach.

"I was out there and I couldn’t see the track properly. The tarmac is so black on the resurfaced areas so you cannot see if it was damp on that part or not, so I took a very, very calm approach, to be honest.

"Especially around here at Monaco I want to build on my weekend little by little, I don’t want to make any stupid mistakes. I think that’s the right approach and in FP2 I started pushing a bit more and feeling a bit more comfortable and getting everything a bit together."

Click here for a look at the technical updates brought by all the teams at the start of the European season

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