F1 News, Reports and Race Results

Racing Point woes in Monaco linked to tyres, but a fix is in

Racing Point team boss Otmar Szafnauer says the pink squad has identified the reasons behind its poor qualifying pace in Monaco and will apply a fix for Canada.

Both Sergio Perez and Lance Stroll were laggards in the Saturday afternoon grid-defining session, failing to exit Q1 and finishing just ahead of the familiarly slow Williams pair of George Russell and Robert Kubica.

From their lowly starting position, Perez made it up to P13 on race day, tagging on an extra place as a result of a time penalty handed to Kevin Magnussen, while Stroll could do no better than 16th.

"We know what went wrong in qualifying, and hope we'll have a good fix for it in Canada. It's all in the tyres," Szafnauer told Motorsport.com.

"We just have to learn. Even Mercedes, as you saw, they almost lost it due to the tyres. We'll get there, I have no doubt. We'll recover, that's what we're good at."

Szafnauer admitted that once the team had botched its qualifying I Monte-Carlo, chances of points on the challenging street circuit became remote.

"Our expectations were definitely higher, and once we got it wrong in qualifying, it was very hard to recover," said the Racing Point chief.

"I think our race pace was decent, but it's hard to overtake, and then when you try somebody like Magnussen cuts the chicane and hurts you too, and you can't do it again.

"Sergio got held up by the traffic jam at Rascasse, and we lost a good six or seven seconds there. At the end he was a couple of seconds of scoring a point.

"In between him and a point was Magnussen and Norris. Had he been able to get Magnussen early, there would have been a chance. And he had him."

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Michael Delaney

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