Symonds wants strong quali and race for Williams pair

Williams Chief Technical Officer Pat Symonds is looking for the British outfit to erase its disappointing performance in Monaco last season  while at least preserving its place in F1's current hierarchy.

Williams track record in the Principality only boasts three wins since 1979, but that's perhaps a testimony to the incredible challenges the famed street circuit embodies.

Its winding and guard-rail-lined layout was perhaps best summed up by former Williams driver Nelson Piquet: "Racing at Monaco is like riding a bicycle in an appartment!"

For Monaco, Pirelli have made available the soft, supersoft and ultrasoft tyres. This will be the debut of the ultrasoft tyre this season.

Williams has chosen to allocate each driver with the same sets of tyres. Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas will have two sets of soft tyres, four sets of supersoft tyres and seven sets of ultrasoft tyres available throughout the weekend.

"The Monaco circuit is perhaps the most challenging we visit all year, both in terms of car set-up and for the drivers," explaines Pat Symonds.

"While we always think of Monaco as a high downforce track, most circuits these days are. What is far more important here is to get a good chassis balance through corners that are generally slower and have a very different surface to those we meet on conventional race tracks. "

The very first use this season of Pirelli's new UltraSoft compound at a Grand Prix weekend is just another potential factor that teams whall have to take into account.

" With overtaking difficult at Monaco, there will be a need to get the maximum potential out of the tyre for a good grid position, while managing tyre consumption to have the option of doing a one-stop race.

"The forecast is for a dry weekend, but one can never rule out rain in Monaco as onshore winds and high hills above can produce a microclimate.

"We can’t hide from the fact that our performance last year was well below par, and a lot of analysis has gone into determining why.

"Our hopes for this year, as always, will be to get both cars in good grid positions and race strongly from there."

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