Paul Hembery, motorsport director: “The teams were disadvantaged by wet weather during free practice inMonacoa fortnight ago, and we think they were all quite rightly wary of this happening again. So we saw plenty of drivers on the soft and supersoft tyres right from the beginning of the first session, but without knowing which fuel loads the different cars were running, it’s quite hard to get a firm idea of their relative pace.
“Our initial findings suggest that there may be a difference of around 0.4-0.7 seconds between the two compounds, but as the circuit is evolving all the time, we will only be sure once we have analysed all the data. The fact that there was a red flag in both sessions simply goes to underline the difficulty of this circuit, with grip at a premium. Had the second session gone on for just a few minutes longer, we would also have seen the Cinturato intermediate and wet tyres coming out, so it emphasises just how unpredictable this race is.
“Under the circumstances, the teams will want to accumulate as much information as possible to cater for every eventuality. I am sure we will see plenty more running tomorrow morning as the teams continue to collect data and with the top 10 covered by just 0.619s we are surely set to see a very close qualifying session.”
