Mercedes Formula 1 team boss Ross Brawn has ruled out using one of his drivers as a sacrificial lamb in the Monaco Grand Prix to try to guarantee his outfit victory.

With Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton securing the front row in Monte Carlo, the team could boost its chances of a win by using one of the drivers to hold the rest of the field up while the other is allowed to break free at the front.

But Brawn insists that there is no temptation to adopt such a tactic from the start, and has told both his drivers that they are heading into the event free to race each other for the win.

“The tortoise and hare strategy is one that people speculate on, but I don’t think either of our drivers are tortoises,” said Brawn, when asked by AUTOSPORT about the possibility of using one driver as a rear-gunner.

“We will let the race run and see what develops. Our ambition is to get a one-two and we will do what is sensible to try and achieve that.”

Brawn suggested that although such a tactic is an obvious one for Monaco, the only way to impose it fairly would have been to discuss it before qualifying, to show that one driver was not being given preferential treatment.

He made it clear, however, that no such talk had taken place with Hamilton or Rosberg about the matter.

“If you are thinking along those lines, you need to do it before [qualifying] practice and we haven’t done it,” he said.

“So we will let the race develop and, as always, we will do what is right for the team. We will leave the drivers as alone as possible to race each other.”

Rosberg, who famously followed team orders in the Malaysian Grand Prix to come home behind Hamilton, said that Saturday night strategy discussions would finalise their tactics for the race.

“We are going to discuss strategy and everything tonight and then we will see what the best way forward is,” he said.

“It is quite complicated because there might be some people trying a one-stop for example, and then how do they interfere with the two-stoppers in the race and things like that.

“We really need to wait and see how that pans out and have a good discussion tonight to see what is the best way forward. We need to work out how together we can make the most of it and possibly help each other out in some situations.”

Paul di Resta thinks Force India got complacent in Q1 in Monaco and threw away a chance to qualify in the top six.

The Scot was eliminated in Q1 and will start 17th, a result he described as “probably the most painful experience I’ve ever had in qualifying”.

Earlier in the session di Resta had been a frontrunner, and he believes that made the team feel too secure, leading to an errant call to stay out on worn intermediates as others changed to fresh tyres.

“Probably what threw us was that our performance on inters at the beginning was very successful,” said di Resta when asked by AUTOSPORT how the session had gone awry.

“We were well within the top three, better than we imagined, and maybe we felt a bit too comfortable.

“If we’d been in a bit more trouble and put a fresh set on, we’d have been easily through.

“In sector one and two, I had no rear tyres to get through the dry sector three.

“If it stayed wet, which I hoped it would have – because the performance in the beginning was a big step over where we have been in the wet – I think we would have been easily in Q3.

“And in the dry, we were P7 this morning but with quite a bit more potential still to go.”

He believes Force India should make changes to ensure the Monaco situation does not arise again.

“There are procedures that probably need to be improved in how we make decisions,” said di Resta.

1 – Nico ROSBERG (Mercedes),

2 – Lewis HAMILTON (Mercedes),

3 – Sebastian VETTEL (Red Bull Racing)

TV UNILATERAL

Q: Nico, I guess in some ways the result that many people had expected – but it was not straightforward in the way it was achieved today, given the conditions.

Nico ROSBERG: Oh, definitely, yeah! It could have been a lot easier out there today. The conditions were all over the place and as soon as it started drizzling again the lap times became a lot slower, even on the Inters. So it was really difficult and changing so much, y’know? So you really have to be out there at the right time with the right tyres, especially in Q2, changing over to slicks – but I’m really happy. Everything went to plan and the last lap was OK. It’s great to be on pole again, especially in Monaco. If at any track then it’s this track where it makes a difference.

Q: Lewis, you held provisional pole position for a matter of a few seconds…

Lewis HAMILTON: Thanks!

Q: …before Nico came through. Did you think you’d done enough on that lap? Did you think that today was the day?

LH: I didn’t, definitely not. I’ve been struggling all weekend as you can see, my pace was sucking all weekend and just struggling with the car if I’m honest. It’s the first time I’ve ever had that experience here in Monaco, since 2005, every year, I was on it and didn’t have any problems with confidence or anything like that – but this weekend has been difficult. So I’m really happy to be here, be able to lock-out, obviously, the front row for the team and just massive improvement for me, considering all the sessions in qualifying – so I’m still chuffed.

Q: Sebastian, you were fastest in Q2 but when push came to shove at the very end, were you just missing that final little bit, do you think?

Sebastian VETTEL: Yeah, I think it was very close. Mercedes was very quick all weekend, we know they are very quick on one lap. But I don’t want that to sound like an excuse. I think it was a bit more than a tenth missing and I think I had that today but it didn’t come together on the last lap. Really, if anyone’s to blame… I think the car was very, very good and if anyone’s to blame then it’s me. So, not entirely happy .with the last lap but quite happy that there isn’t a Ferrari or a Lotus ahead. Tomorrow I think these guys will have to stop at least as much as us – yeah therefore I think sitting in third is still a good result and should be a good opportunity tomorrow to win the race.

Q: Back to you Nico, it’s 30 years since your father Keke won this grand prix, 30 years to the year You’re bidding to become the first son of a former winner to win the Monaco Grand Prix. Your thoughts on tomorrow’s grand prix.

NR: Well, it’s always nice to hear these statistics but… yeah, it’s nice but it doesn’t really change much for tomorrow. Just very happy starting first. And you know, in Barcelona we were still struggling a lot in the race. I was 70 seconds behind at the end of the race from the race winner. We’re improving, it’s difficult to understand the tyres and get the most out of it. We’re improving step by step – but there’s still a lot of question marks remaining. And so here, yeah, I’m sure we’ve made a step forward but it’s still going to be difficult for us tomorrow, definitely. It’s still our weakness but we’ll make the best of it and, who knows? You can always have a few surprises.

PRESS CONFERENCE

Q: Obviously Nico it’s an all-German final this evening in the Champions’ League, you’ve stuck the car on pole position so a fair bit to shout about there – but there was one moment in Q1 at Mirabeau where you appeared to be about to go straight on – so quite a close moment. Did you have your heart in your mouth at that moment?

NR: Two moments actually! I did exactly the same thing twice. I was just surprised by the lack of grip going into there and then I didn’t really want to accept the next time around that I had to take so much speed out, and so I went straight again. But anyway, it was the beginning of the session, it was drying out so I knew that there was plenty of time to set a time later on. But of course those moments are not great. Prefer staying on track.

Q: Lewis, I guess it’s moments like that where you guys really show what you can do, finding grip levels. At no point in the weekend have we had any wet-running and you had to go out there and find the limit almost immediately. Can you just put into words how you do that and what it feels like, what you’re getting back through the car?

LH: That’s not an easy question to answer. It’s just down to feel and we all have… that’s the skill that we have, to feel the grip when it’s unknown and that’s really one of the most exciting things about this session: you never knew where the grip was. You’d arrive in a corner: sometimes you’ve overdone it; sometimes you’ve undershot. And like Nico said, it’s surprising how little grip there was in some places. And that’s what makes the session so exciting. And like I said, I’m just happy. Congratulations to Nico, he did a great job today – but I’m really happy I could be up here with him.

Q: Sebastian, your thoughts on that – and also on what we saw on Thursday from Red Bull in terms of long-run performance. Obviously we know what’s happened the last few races with Mercedes after strong qualifying but this is a very different kind of race track in terms of tyre wear, isn’t it?

SV: Yeah, I think we will have to wait until tomorrow really to be precise – but I think we had an idea on Thursday. Our performance on Thursday – my performance on Thursday was not great. I wasn’t feeling the car and therefore today I was much, much happier. We improved the car a lot so having that extra day yesterday I think helped us. Right from the start this morning the car was much more to my liking. I felt much more confident, got into the rhythm nicer which is the most important around here. If you don’t feel comfortable then you just don’t dare to go faster. So I was very happy with the car and I’m, I think, very confident for tomorrow. Long run pace looked already good on Thursday so I expect it to be again a bit again a stronger on Friday [Sunday]. I think we’re pretty much average in terms of tyre wear, so yeah, the last couple of races Mercedes was worst in that regard but Monaco is a different track. A little bit different what we can expect tomorrow, so I think we still have a great chance from P3, hoping for a good start and then getting into the race nicely, doing the right calls at the right time and hopefully come out ahead. That’s the plan. But surely those guys have something against that. But yeah, our target tomorrow is to win.

QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR.

Q: (Michael Schmidt – Auto, Motor und Sport) Seb, you were the only one in the last outing who did only one flying lap instead of two. First of all, why did you do it? And second, was it a mistake? Because everybody seems to be faster on the second lap.

SV: Yeah, would, could, should! I think if I could decide again then I’d probably go for two and two. Two laps every time. I was confident that when the track picks up I’m able to nail the first lap. My first sector wasn’t bad but the first two corners, which is turn one and then the Casino, the fronts weren’t ready and then you play catching up. You feel that you’ve lost something. Overall I was happy with the lap but I think there was a tenth, a tenth-and-a-half for sure somewhere. So therefore initially a little disappointed. But as I said, overall happy because on Thursday it didn’t look as if we were anywhere close to the first two rows, so I’m happy with the result and confident for tomorrow.

Q: (David Tremayne – The Independent) Two questions to Lewis. Can you expand a little bit more on what you said about this struggle. Is it a matter of just the setup of the car?

LH: No, the setup of the car is good. It’s been good all weekend but that’s probably… that last lap is probably the first time I’ve switched my tyres on all weekend. And when you don’t generate the heat in your tyres you don’t have the confidence to hit the brakes hard and brake late. Even on that lap, my tyres weren’t ready by turn one, similar to what Seb was experiencing. That means you just have a bit of understeer and you’re playing catch-up for the rest of the lap. But generally the rest of the lap was great. That’s why my middle and my last sector were competitive. It was a big improvement for me because in P1, P2 and P3 it was a disaster. I think it’s just that it’s a new car still. For whatever reason I’m still coming to terms with it.

Q: (David Tremayne – The Independent) Lewis you’ve been criticised again lately – it’s the lifestyle thing again and that’s why you’re struggling and everything else. What’s your reaction to that?

LH: Well, I’m not really aware of it. Someone mentioned something about my dog. How the hell can a dog be distracting? I don’t really know how I could live my life any different. I’m enjoying my life, so if people have a got a problem with that then that’s there problem.

Q: (Frederic Ferret – l’Equipe) A question to Sebastian. Apart from the start, where do you think you can overtake the Mercedes tomorrow?

SV: I don’t know. There’s a lot of laps here, 78, so… I think on track it will be difficult, we all know that. I think obviously I was fourth last year at the end of the race for quite… many laps. I had the feeling I could go faster, I think Nico was in second, he had the feeling he could go faster but it’s difficult to overtake. In 2009 I didn’t mind that it was difficult because I was in the lead, it always depends where you are. On track it will be difficult but, yeah, if all goes well hopefully the Mercedes will struggle and we’ll sail past in the pit stop. I think we can’t rely on that. As I said tyre wear for will for sure play a role tomorrow but I think we need to look after ourselves first and then we’ll see what happens and hopefully we make the right calls at the right time. I think that will definitely be the chance we have.

Q: (Vincent Marre – Sport Zeitung) My question is to all three of you. Two weeks ago Fernando Alonso was mentioning the GP2 race, he was mentioning the fact that it helped him because he realised that he could overtake at a specific curve and in some words he was… Tom Dillmann was helping him to overtake at this curve. So my question to all three of you, I would is when you are watching the GP2 races, does it help you. How do you watch it, what do you feel, do you prepare for the race with that?

NR: I always watch it, and especially I learn from the start. See how it goes, grip left and right, how it goes into the first corner. That’s probably the only thing I personally pick up from them.

LH: The same really. I have a question, though. What corner was it?

It was in Barcelona. It was the third corner.

LH: Round the outside.

Yes, Tom Dilmann did it. He [Alonso] was saying that he was not thinking he was able to overtake there.

LH: Yeah, it can definitely help sometimes.

Q: (Leonid Novozhilov – F1 Life) My question is to Sebastian Vettel. Do you have maybe special training exercises for Monaco race? Or maybe for you it’s same race as other races?

SV: Interesting question. I think it would be ideal to get some extra laps compared to everyone else, but that’s not possible – they would need to block the whole city and you’re not allowed tot do that so it’s a bit difficult. Surely around here it’s a very different track, it’s very bumpy, you need to be very sharp. Timing matters. You need to dare to go close to the rails. It’s difficult to practice. Obviously we have a simulator and you get an idea, but it’s different in reality, especially when you brush the wall. You feel it a little bit more than in the simulator. But it’s good fun. We enjoy coming here. There has been some talk about the track not being safe. There will always be some risk but I think we have for example the best marshals here for the whole year, so it does make you feel safe when you know that if something goes wrong these people know how to take care of you. So compliments for that and generally I quite like street circuits.

What about you Nico, because you have a whole warm-up routine involving footballs and various things with your trainer. Is it different in any way here in Monaco?

NR: No same thing. I just like to play some soccer before getting in the car – just to move about it.

Q: (Malcolm Folley – Mail on Sunday) Nico and Lewis, now that I’ve been reprimanded by the headmaster, you’ll talk through tonight how you’ll approach the start tomorrow. Can you just confirm to us that you’ll be expected to race against one another but clearly the instruction will be to make sure that you don’t take each off early in the race?

NR: Can you assure us that you’re going to behave from now on? Then we’ll answer the question. Of course, well we respect each other and the start is going to be important for sure and we’ll see who gets to the first corner first. I have the advantage that I’m ahead and on the clean side of the grid so that will definitely be good and then from there we have to see how it goes – who’s quicker in the race and strategy and things like that.

Your thoughts, Lewis?

LH: Yeah, I think tonight we’ll speak about it. It’s obviously important that we position ourselves in a smart way that we can keep Sebastian behind and then focus on trying to grab that one-two.

Q: (Heikki Kulta – Turun Sanomat) Nico congratulations for the pole. How much easier would it have been in dry conditions?

NR: It’s never easy, but for sure the conditions out there were more difficult out there than if it had been completely dry. I don’t know it was probably similar because it’s the same for everybody, so yeah similar.

Q: (Livio Oricchio – O Estado de Sao Paulo) To both drivers of Mercedes. Your car has some news here on this track. From the information you got in free practice do you believe you can have a race different from the last ones where you also started from the front and lost a lot of performance?

NR: It’s only two weeks since then, yeah. We were 70 seconds away then so for sure we still have large problems in the race and it’s definitely still going to be a difficulty yeah. The track is an advantage for us because you can’t overtake so easily. It also eats the tyres less this track, so for sure there are some advantages. We made a few changes to improve things so we are progressing and hopefully looking better than Barcelona but it’s still our weakness you know, so we have to wait. But it can also be a bit better than expected tomorrow. We just have to wait and see.

Your thoughts on that Lewis and when there is a fix coming for this problem in the race?

LH: There isn’t a fix. Obviously we’ve been working very hard to understand them, so there will be a slight adjustment. Hoping that they will be a little bit better for us. As Nico said it’s difficult to overtake here but it has only been two weeks so we haven’t made a huge step forward but hopefully with less high-speed corners here we might stand a better chance.

Q: (Walter Kosta – Saarbrücker Zeitung) Question to Sebastian. Did you expect that the team Lotus, in this qualifying, would be the third power, with your friend, I mean Kimi, before Ferrari, with Alonso?

SV: I think it was difficult to foresee what is going to happen in qualifying. In practice it looked as if the Lotus is very quick, at least Romain was very, very quick through all the sessions – sometimes a little bit too quick, especially in the first corner, he was struggling a little bit there. I spoke to Kimi on Thursday and he said that he didn’t feel so well yet but I think they managed to improve the car. But as I said before, when you feel confident around here, when you like you car, you can gain quite a lot of time, much more than on a normal track. So it’s very important to feel comfortable. So in that regard it is a surprise that Lotus beat Ferrari because Ferrari looked very competitive already on Thursday.

Q: (Barna Zsoldos – Nemzeti Sport) Lewis, it’s already three-in-a-row for Nico. How do you cope psychologically that your team-mate is constantly faster than you in the qualifying, because it’s a completely new situation for you?

LH: It is a new situation for me, one that I seem to be dealing with pretty well. As I said, I’ve had pretty good seasons here in the past in terms of being on the pace. This has definitely been one of the worst so far. So to be second is a bit of a blessing for me considering how slow I was earlier on in practice. Of course I need to correct this. As soon as I’m able to extract the maximum from the car hopefully in the next couple of races, hopefully we’ll see the true pace.

Q: (Andrea Cremonesi – La Gazzetta dello Sport) Nico, this is the third pole in a row for you. I would like to know how is the situation. You made pole position ion the last two races and don’t make any mistake and you are the real Monegasque guy because you grew up here. I want to know how is the feeling to make this achievement, the pole position, in your really home grand prix.

NR: Very special for sure. I’ve grown up here. Lived here all my life. Gone to school here. The way through the tunnel is my way to school and now I’m driving through there with a silver arrow. To be on pole today is a great feeling and yeah fantastic, look forward to tomorrow and make the best of it and try to get a good result.

Sergio Perez – 7th: “It’s not great to cross the finish line, feel like you’ve just done a mega lap, and find that you’re only seventh.

“Still, I put in a really strong performance here today, and I felt like I’d really maximised the full potential of the car.

“We know we’re not quite there yet performance-wise, so we need to keep pushing. But the team has done a fantastic job so far this weekend, and I hope we can keep the momentum going tomorrow and score some good points.

“Anything can happen at Monaco on Sunday.”

Jenson Button – 9th: “I’m not sure what happened on my final lap in Q3. We had an issue with the car right at the end – I didn’t have any power, so I couldn’t post a quick lap.

“It’s a pity because, apart from that problem, which we also saw a sign of at the end of Q2, it had been a great qualifying session for me. The team did a great job in terms of putting me out on the right tyres at the right time, while I felt I was driving well, making the most of the conditions.”

“Tomorrow’s race will be difficult, starting from P9, but on this occasion there’s absolutely nothing I could have done about it.”

Martin Whitmarsh, team principal: “Today’s qualifying session was tricky for everyone, as it always is here at Monaco, but Jenson and Checo both drove faultlessly.

“Meanwhile, for our part, we generally managed to get them both out on track at the right times, with the right tyres fitted.

“Checo did an excellent job to qualify seventh-fastest, but Jenson was disappointed to end up only ninth, disadvantaged as he was by a power loss that prevented him from essaying a final quick lap in Q3.

“We don’t yet know for certain what caused that power loss, but we’d already seen signs of it at the end of Q2. We’ll investigate.

“It was a pity because, as he always does at Monaco, Jenson had been driving really well. That being the case, I’m sure he could have qualified quite a bit closer to the front had he had another lap in which to do so.

“Looking forward, then, tomorrow’s race will be long and hard – and, although overtaking will be as difficult as ever, mistakes will inevitably play a part in the race’s unfolding drama, and both Jenson and Checo will be trying their hardest to drive faultlessly again in an effort to score as many world championship points as they possibly can.”

Fernando Alonso – 6th: “Unfortunately, today did not go a we had hoped, even if we tried our very best. We weren’t as competitive as in the first two free practice sessions on Thursday, but I don’t think we can lay the blame for this step backwards on the cooler temperatures, because the conditions are the same for everyone. There was less grip today and on the Softs, maybe we struggled a bit more this morning. I think it’s much simpler than that and we struggled to adapt our car to this very special track, so different to all the others. We usually go better in the race, but it’s a different story here because it’s almost impossible to overtake. This is a race where anything can happen, and we need to be very careful at the start to avoid ending up stuck in a pack. Fortunately, the Mercedes are on the front so that my closest rivals in the classification are not too far, with Kimi starting next to me and Vettel just one row ahead. Let’s hope I can pass both of them so that they can’t pull further away in the championship. I feel sorry for Felipe, as the team did its very best but could not get him out in time for qualifying. I am well aware how starting from the back of the grid here in Monaco can make a difficult race even harder. However, I hope he can do well and that together we can bring home as many points as possible.”

Felipe Massa – 22nd: : “I am disappointed not to have been able to take part in qualifying and it was really frustrating. This morning in the final practice session, I braked on a bump, the car bottomed and unexpectedly both front wheels locked up and from then on, there was nothing I could do. After hitting the guardrail I was waiting for the next impact with the barriers. Fortunately I’m okay, I’ve just got a bit of muscle strain, but the car was very damaged and the mechanics efforts to try and repair it in time came to nothing. It was a lot of work for the team, they all made a huge effort and for this I really want to thank them. It’s a real shame starting from the back, especially on a track where it’s so difficult to overtake, but now we need to be optimistic and concentrate on tomorrow’s race. There will be a lot of work to do to assess if we need to change something in terms of set-up and strategy, to try and come up with something different which might give us an advantage. We know we are starting from a very difficult position, but the race is long and anything can happen. We will try and make the most of any opportunity, pushing to the maximum as usual.”

Pat Fry: Not an easy day, as we faced an uphill struggle right from the morning, when Felipe had his accident in the third free practice session. The team raced against time to repair the car so that he could take part in qualifying, but unfortunately there were too many damaged parts at the front and rear, so that required a lot of work and there was just too little time to get it done. Qualifying in the wet in Monaco is always interesting, as one has to pay particular attention to the traffic, the yellow flags and the changing track conditions, especially on days like this when the rain comes and goes. The drop in temperature partly compromised our performance and with Fernando we also had a few balance problems: both these factors prevented us getting the result we were hoping for, even if it can be said that the final classification did not throw up too many surprises compared to previous races. In Q2, the decision to switch from the intermediates to the super-soft was taken at the right moment: in the final stages, the track was dry in parts but the pace of the Mercedes and Red Bulls was very good. Tomorrow we will be fighting against the statistics as the winners here have nearly always started from the front rows, but we will try and make the most of any opportunity that comes our way to move up the order.”

Charles Pic – 18th: “First I want to say well done to Giedo and the whole team for the job everyone did today. It’s obviously a bit disappointing I wasn’t with my teammate in Q2 but it was very close and the team did a good job to give us both a chance today.

“This morning, FP3 was all about understeer for me. We started the session with quite a long run on the softs and the car was understeering everywhere, so we spent most of the session trying to dial that out and get a better balance. By the end of the session it was improving but even on the supersofts I still wasn’t really getting everything out of it.

“In quali we went out early, first cars on track, and put in a good run on the inters with the times coming down throughout the session. We made the call to come in for a new set of inters with about five minutes left of Q1 but I couldn’t quite get enough out in the last sector due to traffic, but 18th is still OK around Monaco. We’ve had good pace on the long runs here, and very good degradation levels on the tyres, so let’s see what happens tomorrow.”

Giedo van der Garde – 15th: “I’m obviously very pleased to put my name into the Q2 timesheets for the first time this year and I want to thank Tony, Cyril and the whole team for the jobs everyone did today. Honestly, it’s a great feeling, but it’s still part of the learning process for me. I’ve said since the start of the season that I’d make progress, and today showed how far we’ve all come in just six races, and there’s more to come.

“Saturday started pretty well and in FP3 we went out for a long-ish run on the softs straight away but, like Charles, for me the car was understeering a lot. I was having to use throttle to help turn the car so we made a couple of mechanical changes and from then it was a bit better, but the tyres weren’t really coming in as much as we’d have liked, so we tried another mechanical change for quali and the results are pretty obvious!

“In Q1 we went out very early as there were reports of more showers coming. As it turned out that wasn’t the case, but we timed the stop well and had about four more quick laps on the inters at the end of Q1, enough time to put myself into Q2.

“Q2 started with a bit more rain, so we again went for the inters, but after one lap I thought it was dry enough for slicks so we boxed, went onto the supersofts and was the first car to make the switch. For a while we were looking at Q3, but that’s not where we are performance-wise yet, so we’re all really happy with Q2.

“Sunday could be very interesting. I start between the two Williams cars of Bottas and Maldonado and I’ve had good starts all year, so hopefully I can have another good launch, avoid anything like the GP2 mess on Friday, and from there anything’s possible. I finished on the podium here last year in GP2 and, while that’s not going to happen this year, we will definitely be racing quite a few cars all afternoon.”

Cyril Abiteboul, Team Principal: “This is one of the good days, the best so far this year for our team. Personally, I’m proud of the work everyone is doing to give us moments like seeing Giedo’s name in Q2. He drove very well, showing how he much he keeps developing and how he’s brave enough to be the first driver out there to make the call to go for it on slicks in what were still very tricky conditions on track. Both he and Charles have been driving very well all weekend, minimising the mistakes and pushing when they need to and Charles was unlucky not to join Giedo in Q2. However, he also showed his talent by being right in the mix in Q1 until the flag fell and with the pace and racecraft he’s shown all year, particularly in Bahrain and Spain, he’ll be right in the action tomorrow.

“This is another small step in our ongoing development, another reason why we are all here working so hard to be part of the show, and I want everyone in our team to use this as another source of motivation for Sunday and the rest of the season. We obviously have the main task ahead of us tomorrow, but days like this are why we’re in this sport, and to have our first Q2 of the year when Tony’s on track with us makes this a very special day.”

Kimi Raikkonen – 5th: “It was a difficult day today because of the weather, but it was the same for all of the drivers. Obviously, qualifying here is never the easiest with the traffic and the barriers and you’d always prefer it to be dry as it’s so slippery when it’s wet. I’m happy we made it through to the top ten and P5 was more or less the best we could do with seven tenths to the next fastest car. I’m not sure what we’ll do in the race; we don’t have a clear picture yet as you never know exactly what the strategies from everyone else will be, but for sure we’ll find out tomorrow.”

Romain Grosjean – 13th: “The team did an unbelievable job to get the car ready for me after what happened in P3 this morning; I’m extremely grateful to all of them. I really owe them today and I think that’s more drinks I will have to buy at the end of the weekend. We had the car to do something very good in qualifying, but I caught Daniel [Ricciardo] in Q2 when the track was getting drier and faster. I had just two laps on the slicks and we weren’t able to get through to the top ten which is really frustrating. What can you say? This is Monaco. We have seen different weather conditions and it is a unique circuit. We will see what happens in the race tomorrow.”

Alan Permane, Trackside Operations Director:

How was qualifying for the team?

“It was a disappointing session for us. Firstly we need to say a big thank you to Romain’s crew for getting his car ready for qualifying in lightening quick time, and they were rewarded by a lightening quick first lap from their man. Unfortunately, traffic at the end of Q2 prevented him from getting into the top ten which was a great shame. Kimi has a reasonable position with P5 on the grid, but moving forwards up the order at Monaco is exceptionally difficult so any gains tomorrow will be hard won.”

How difficult was it on the pitwall through qualifying?

“Our car worked well in all conditions today so the weather wasn’t so much of a problem, we just had to ensure we had the correct tyres on at the right time. Finding clear track here is always difficult, no matter what the weather, and that’s what we saw with Romain today.”

Romain’s Q1 lap was quite something?

“It was an incredibly impressive lap. To go out in variable conditions with the pressure of only having a few minutes of the session remaining, and still manage to go P1 on your first lap is really quite an achievement.”

What’s possible in the race?

“Monaco is a very different circuit from any other, with the short lap length and traffic considerations meaning that there are not many viable options for different strategies. Add that to a dry weather forecast for tomorrow – plus the fact that it’s almost impossible to pass here – and we have a very difficult race in prospect. We will of course look at all possibilities and do what we can to get our cars to the front. It’s a very long race and we have seen fortunes change on a Sunday quite often thus far in 2013, so anything’s possible.”

Max Chilton – 20th: “After a good start on Thursday, today has been quite a big challenge with the tricky conditions we had in qualifying. Naturally I was hoping for a better grid slot because it’s all about grid position in Monaco. I think I got the best out of the tyre too early and it just wasn’t there at the end when the track was a bit drier. It’s disappointing because it will be a long race tomorrow. The weather looks fine, so with a clean first lap I’ll be hoping to make the best of any opportunities which come our way.”

Jules Bianchi – 21st: “Of course I was hoping for a good shot at qualifying for my home race, so it is very disappointing to have to pull over so soon and not take part in the session. The Team aren’t entirely sure of the full cause of the problem just yet but it was clear that I would not have been able to complete any laps, which is why they asked me to pull over. We have to wait to see what happens. I think it could be a very exciting race for everyone tomorrow; things have not been straightforward through the field so we have to remain focused and see what happens and then do the best job possible in what are tough circumstances.”

John Booth, Team Principal: “In FP3 this morning we opted to do a little more work on our long run pace, having been less happy with this on Thursday. We got very little from the option tyre so we knew qualifying was going to be a challenge even before the weather turned against us. We needed a dry session for our two drivers, who have never driven around Monaco in a Formula One car in the wet before. We are very sorry for the problem which prevented Jules from taking part in the session and we will look to ensure this is rectified going forward. With Max we were perhaps not quite there in terms of the optimum time to fit the last set of Intermediate tyres. It will be a tough race tomorrow but we will give it our best shot and see what we can make of it.”

Giedo van der Garde regards qualifying 15th for the Monaco Grand Prix as a career high.

The Dutchman reached Q2 for the first time in Formula 1 as he made Caterham’s first appearance in the second stage of qualifying this season.

Even though he has won races in his junior career, as well as the Formula Renault 3.5 title, he believes this achievement is up there with anything else he has achieved.

“Yes, it’s a big day for me and the team,” van der Garde told AUTOSPORT when asked if this was a career high.

“It was a great day for us and I’m very happy and proud of what we did.

“It’s not easy in these conditions, but you have to make the most of them and take what you can get.”

Caterham judged the conditions well in Q1, opting to bring van der Garde in for fresh intermediate rubber, which allowed him to improve his time by a big enough margin to end up ahead of Paul di Resta and Esteban Gutierrez.

In Q2, van der Garde gambled on a switch to slicks when everyone else was on intermediates. He climbed as high as fifth at one point before being demoted by faster cars that changed tyres later in the session.

“We played it quite aggressive,” he said of the team’s strategy.

“I was the first one on slicks and it was my call.

“But at those moments, you have nothing to lose and you have to try to get what you can.”

Despite being inside the top 10 in the closing minutes of the session, van der Garde believes that he did the best he could have done and that it was impossible to reach Q3 without the rain returning.

He ended up just over a second-and-a-half off the Q3 cut-off time, but believes that there was no more pace in the car because of the conditions.

“The gap to Q3 was quite big,” he said.

“It was still wet at the end of Q2 so it was tough and the car was sliding around a lot.”

With the Caterham having shown stronger race pace than qualifying pace so far this weekend, van der Garde is hopeful of a good result in Sunday’s race.

“You never know – as we saw in the GP2 race on Friday, anything can happen at into the first turn,” he said when asked if he felt scoring a point might be possible.

Frenchman Davy Jeanney heads the order after day one of round three of the European Rallycross Championship in Hungary.

It has been a bittersweet day for the Citroen driver. Second fastest in heat one was followed by fastest of all in heat two to put him on top overnight.

However, engine failure in practice forced his team to change the unit, earning a 15-point penalty.

Alexander Hvall lies second overnight, with top three times in both of the first two heats.

British driver Liam Doran claimed fastest time in heat one with an accomplished drive, and almost certainly would have done the same in heat two, had he not jumped the start of his race, forcing him to take the joker lap on two occasions as punishment.

Petter Solberg set sixth fastest time in the first heat following a close battle with reigning champion Timur Timerzyanov.

Former World Rally champion Solberg led his race in the second heat in commanding fashion, only to spin on the second lap. He finished last, was 10th fastest and sits eighth overnight.

The second heat was littered with attrition. Peter Hedstrom, Andy Scott, Andreas Bakkerud and Stig-Olov Walfridson were all removed from the running following damage sustained in a first-corner pile-up.

Ronny Scheveneels continued his luckless season, ripping two wheels and a heap of bodywork off his Peugeot 207 in the first heat. He was unable to repair it in time for the second.

On top of the Super1600 category is Renault Clio driver Renis Nitiss ahead of Swede Eric Faren. TouringCar is headed by Irish driver Derek Tohill who was fastest in both heats.

Heats three and four take place on Sunday morning with the finals in the afternoon.

John Bryant-Meisner crossed the line first in the opening round of the British Formula 3 International Series at Silverstone, but it was Will Buller who claimed maximum points.

Invitation Class runner Bryant-Meisner was running with the boost disconnected on his Performance Racing Dallara, but still strode comfortably clear of the main International Class, which ultimately underperformed as a whole.

“The car shouldn’t really be that quick [compared to the rest],” said the Swede, whose machine does not run an engine air restrictor, but in the race was only eighth fastest on the Hangar Straight speed trap.

“The others just tangled around a bit. My car is a bit heavier [the German F3 spec VW engine is 15kg heavier]. It felt really good, I made a good start and I was able to get away.”

Fellow front-row starter Jordan King stalled at the start, allowing Carlin Dallara-Volkswagen team-mate Nicholas Latifi into the lead of the International Class.

Felix Serralles speared ahead of the Canadian into Farm, but Latifi then lunged the Fortec Motorsport Dallara-Mercedes at Loop and they collided, both being forced to pit for repairs.

That allowed Buller’s Fortec car into the class lead, chased by Carlin duo Jann Mardenborough and King. A mid-race moment at Becketts proved a worry for Buller, and delayed Mardenborough so that King renewed his attack.

Then, on the 10th lap of 16, King tried a move on Mardenborough at the Loop that spun the Welshman and damaged his own car sufficiently to put him out of the race.

Felipe Guimaraes (Fortec) had shadowed this group, and the incident elevated him to second in class.

He in turn looked to be under pressure from the Double R Racing Dallara-Merc of Antonio Giovinazzi, but the Italian earned a drive-through penalty for persistent disrespect of track limits.

That meant Double R team-mate Sean Gelael completed the podium, the Indonesian schoolboy working his way around the hobbled Mardenborough, who eventually retired, while keeping the third Double R car of Tatiana Calderon comfortably behind.

Giovinazzi finished sixth overall ahead of the National Class battle, which was won by Ed Jones in his Team West-Tec Dallara-Toyota.

The Emirati ran onto the grass exiting Chapel Curve on the opening lap and had to work his way through the pack. Early leaders were West-Tec duo Roberto la Rocca and Cameron Twynham, before Sun Zheng moved in front in his CF Racing Dallara-Mugen Honda..

Jones finally passed the Chinese driver on the penultimate lap, just before it became apparent that Zheng had a five-second track-limits penalty. Nevertheless, even with this applied he still beat Twynham to eighth overall, earning him reversed-grid pole for Sunday morning’s race.

Romain Grosjean insists that his confidence has not been rattled by the two separate trips into the wall at Sainte Devote he has taken so far in the Monaco Grand Prix weekend.

The Lotus driver hit the wall for the first time on Thursday during free practice two, before repeating the effort on Saturday morning in the final minute of the third practice session.

The team managed to repair the car just in time for Grosjean to take part in qualifying, where he locked down 13th on the grid.

“I think I made some mistakes [in practice],” he admitted.

“The car is performing very well, but it was a bit on the edge to start with. Through the weekend we’ve improved.

“It’s not always easy to know exactly what’s going on, and Monaco is very bumpy and very unpredictable. But it didn’t hurt the confidence, as you could see in Q1.”

Grosjean’s Lotus team-mate Kimi Raikkonen will start Sunday’s race from fifth, and is confident of moving forward.

“I think the car was the best it’s been this weekend [in qualifying],” he said.

“We will have to see what will happen, and what the weather will be. Hopefully we can pick up some places.

“If we can get the tyres working a little bit better, we can be fast.”

Adrian Sutil – 8th: “Very tricky conditions today with the track half wet and half dry. We never knew if it was really drying out or if more rain was coming, so it was important to be on the right tyres at the right time. The team did an excellent job of choosing the tyres and making the correct decisions. I also need to thank my crew who worked so hard to fix the car in time for the session after the incident this morning. Tomorrow I will be pushing hard to move forward. A podium is my target and there are seven cars ahead of me, so with a good strategy anything is possible. I just have to concentrate and make the most of this opportunity.”

Paul di Resta – 17th: “We failed to deliver today, which is a real shame because we were very strong in the wet and this is the most crucial qualifying session of the year. The intermediate tyres were working fine for me, but we didn’t read the conditions well enough from the pit wall. I needed a set of fresh intermediates towards the end of the session, but by the time we realised it was too late and there was no time to pit. The only option was to stay out, but my tyres were finished and I didn’t have a chance to progress any further. It’s a painful position to be starting from tomorrow given the speed we had in the car today.”

Dr Vijay Mallya, team principal: “A very frantic qualifying session in Monaco. After Adrian’s crash this morning the mechanics did a magnificent job to repair the car for the start of Q1 – and Adrian made the most of it. In the tricky damp conditions he delivered when it mattered to qualify eighth. As for Paul, I would like to apologise to him because we did not get the tyre strategy right during Q1. He was incredibly quick on the intermediate tyres, but we missed the chance to pit him for a fresh set towards the end of the session. As a result he lines up in P17. For the race we know that anything can happen in Monaco so we will think hard about the strategy to try and secure a good result for both cars.”

Nico Hulkenberg – 11th: “It was a challenging qualifying. Q3 would have been possible as I was six tenths away. But we changed too late onto the super softs and only had one timed lap, which was a missed opportunity. However in changing conditions like those here in Monaco we can be happy we managed to stay out of trouble. P11 is just outside the top ten, so we can choose our strategy for tomorrow accordingly, which is quite good. I simply have to get the most out of the start, gain one or two spots, and stay out of trouble in the first corner. Then one of the most challenging races lies ahead, but I am looking forward to it, because Monaco has it’s own rules and, in the end, this is why we love it so much here.”

Esteban Gutiérrez – 19th: “It was a disappointing qualifying because we didn’t look in bad shape and just our pace on the intermediate tyres wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t able to find more time, I put the lap together and just couldn’t find the grip. It’s going to be a tough race tomorrow, considering that it is really hard to overtake here in Monaco. But we will try our best and hopefully a good strategy will help us to get through the traffic.”

Monisha Kaltenborn, Team Principal: “We had tricky conditions during qualifying. Esteban left the racing line a few times, which certainly left him with less confidence and hence a result like this. Nico drove a good qualifying, but the timing of the change to super softs was unlucky. Nevertheless, it was difficult to estimate when to change tyres. We will fully focus on the race now, which might hold some opportunities.”

Tom McCullough, Head of Track Engineering: “The conditions were difficult throughout the session. Esteban struggled with a lack of grip in Q1 and front locking. We need to investigate the cause for that. For Nico, Q3 was possible. If we had switched to the dry tyres one lap earlier, we would have made it a lot easier for him. But starting from P11 there is still a good chance for points, and we will do the best with our strategy to achieve that tomorrow.”

Nico Rosberg – 1st: “It’s a great feeling to be on pole in the city where I grew up and it means so much to me to drive through the streets here in a Silver Arrow. The conditions were really difficult out there today with the rain at the start but we handled it well. I have to say thank you to everybody at the team for all of their hard work in improving our car and our performance so much since last year. Having said that, we know that race pace has been our weakness. We’ve learnt a lot since the last race, and this track should suit us, but we’ll have to wait until tomorrow to find out if this will be enough.”

Lewis Hamilton – 2nd: “Congratulations to Nico and the team today, a great job all round. It’s a big improvement for me after struggling in the practice sessions here so I’m really happy to be on the front row of the grid. I didn’t have a great first sector on my lap today but after that it really came together. I’ve got some work to do as I haven’t felt completely comfortable in the car this weekend but I’m confident that we can have a good race tomorrow and we’ll be aiming to get the best possible result for the team.”

Ross Brawn: “That was a tricky session and the weather kept us on our toes for the whole hour. Nico, Lewis and the whole team did a great job throughout qualifying to put us in the perfect position at the front of the grid for tomorrow. We are well aware of our fate in the last few races and we have to make sure that we are in better shape for tomorrow. I believe we have moved in the right direction and we’ll see tomorrow if those improvements are enough and we can have a good race.”

Toto Wolff: “What a fantastic result and a brilliant performance from both drivers. There was a lot to lose at the beginning of the session in the wet conditions and it was important to judge the right changeover point from intermediate to dry tyres. The team did a perfect job of keeping both drivers in the chase and they then delivered the rest out on track. Of course we are very pleased this afternoon but, at the risk of sounding like I am repeating myself, we know it’s tomorrow that really counts.”

Sebastian Vettel – 3rd: “I was a bit annoyed with my flying lap in Q3; I think I maybe pushed a bit too hard here and there. The start of the lap wasn’t bad, but also it wasn’t great; with hindsight I should have gone for two flying laps at the start of Q3 and not one, but I decided for that. I thought the tyres would be good enough for the first lap. I have been struggling all weekend, but in the end it was tight. Pole was probably possible today, but we are third. I think with the Mercedes in front, it was expected that they would be strong. We have a good race car and should be able to do well from there tomorrow.”

Mark Webber – 4th: “Yeah I’m pretty happy with that. It’s very easy to be towards the back when you have a disruptive session with those conditions, but we managed to survive all the tricky sections and put together a reasonably tidy effort. You can always look at timings later and think you could have done things differently, but in the heat of the moment you make the decision as to what you think is right and overall it wasn’t too bad. The conditions are changing and the tyres are tricky, so starting on the second row here is not bad. It’s a long race and a lot of strategy can unfold, so we’ll see what we can do from there.”

Christian Horner, team principal: “A very strong team performance with both cars lining up on the second row of the grid in what was a very tight qualifying session. Sebastian put in a very quick lap at the beginning of Q3 and unfortunately didn’t quite have enough to hold on to the pole, but nonetheless a great performance from him and from Mark who once again has done a great job in Monte Carlo.”

(Renault) Thierry Salvi: “At Monaco, getting the engine response completely correct is absolutely crucial to lap time gain. The slow corners and short bursts of power between them require a very precise power delivery in the low rev range, but one of the main advantages of the RS27 is its ability to be mapped to deliver torque exactly when the driver needs it. This helped today and we ended up pretty much where we thought. Tomorrow’s race will be difficult to predict, as overtaking is hard here, so no doubt the tyre wear will play yet another role in the results”

Valtteri Bottas – 14th: “The conditions were not good today as they were changing all the time. We made the most of what we had and although the car is not where we want it to be, we feel we’re in a good position in terms of knowing the development direction to go. The race will be difficult with some quick cars starting behind us, but I’m confident we can still push forward and gain some positions in tomorrow’s race.”

Pastor Maldonado – 16th: “We were quick in Q1 as I know this track very well and in damp conditions I know where to take risks. As it was getting dry the car wasn’t working as well though, as the front was locking quite a lot. I think the top 10 was possible as there is some improvement, especially if it had stayed wet. It is looking good for the future though with the data we have gathered this weekend so far.”

Mike Coughlan – technical director: “It was a difficult qualifying managing the changeable conditions but the team did a good job to make the right calls as to when to switch onto new tyres. In the wet Pastor showed how good he can be around this circuit, posting the quickest time in Q1. Valtteri also did a great job to be ninth in Q1 in his first ever qualifying session here in Monaco. Unfortunately as the track dried we didn’t have the pace in the FW35 and with both cars running together at the end of the session on super-soft tyres they didn’t get the most out of their final laps. We have gathered lots of useful data here though and feel we have a good development direction to take forward.”

Felipe Massa remains open-minded about what he can achieve in the Monaco Grand Prix, despite having to start last due to his practice crash.

Ferrari made a huge effort to repair Massa’s car after a heavy accident at Sainte Devote in the morning.

But it ran out of time to get Massa out in Q1, leaving him 22nd on the grid.

“It is the worst track to have such a problem,” Massa admitted, “but I think we need to remain positive and we will have to try everything we can for tomorrow.

“Monaco is difficult to overtake at, we know, but anything can happen.”

The accident was put down to driver error, although Massa remained puzzled by how it unfolded.

“When I braked over the bump the car touched the floor and I locked both front wheels,” he said.

“It’s not an easy thing to happen, normally you only lock one.

“And then I went into the wall – waiting for it to arrive was not a nice thing.

“I looked at the data, and honestly, when I braked I was in a gear lower than I was on Thursday. I locked both front tyres and it was very strange that it happened.”

He confirmed that he had not been injured in the incident.

“I feel a few pains in the muscles in my back, but I’m OK and it’s nothing that a massage won’t sort out,” Massa said.

Stefano Coletti won the GP2 sprint race around the streets of Monaco, the Principality in which he was born, on Saturday to extend his championship lead.

Rapax driver Coletti made a fine start from third on the grid, outdragging front row man Rene Binder to chase polesitter Adrian Quaife-Hobbs on the opening lap.

Coletti pounced for the lead on lap three at the Nouvelle Chicane, pulling a sublime outbraking move down the inside of Quaife-Hobbs’ MP Motorsport car.

Coletti pulled out a two-second lead, but this then fluctuated as the leader managed his tyres, which appeared to grain as the race progressed. It came down to as little as seven tenths of a second at one point, but was back out to 1.8s by the finish.

Quaife-Hobbs just held on to second despite a late charge from GP3 champion Mitch Evans), who had passed James Calado at Mirabeau in a tight move for third on the opening lap.

Felipe Nasr also passed Calado, the latter cutting the apex at Ste Devote and being forced to give his place up.

Behind the top five, Binder clung to sixth after his slow start.

Friday’s winner Sam Bird ran seventh early on, but his tyres wilted badly after Kevin Ceccon passed him at the chicane and he was forced to pit for fresh rubber.

Stephane Richelmi made it two Monagasque drivers in the points-paying positions with eighth.

Results – 30 laps:



Pos Driver                Team                    Time/Gap

 1. Stefano Coletti       Rapax                 42m50.707s

 2. Adrian Quaife-Hobbs   MP                      + 1.869s

 3. Mitch Evans           Arden                   + 2.216s

 4. Felipe Nasr           Carlin                  + 2.536s

 5. James Calado          ART                     + 3.747s

 6. Rene Binder           Lazarus                + 19.293s

 7. Kevin Ceccon          Trident                + 20.015s

 8. Stephane Richelmi     DAMS                   + 20.576s

 9. Daniel de Jong        MP                     + 21.197s

10. Jake Rosenzweig       Addax                  + 31.720s

11. Sergio Canamasas      Caterham               + 34.105s

12. Jolyon Palmer         Carlin                 + 35.775s

13. Fabio Leimer          Racing Engineering     + 36.488s

14. Julian Leal           Racing Engineering     + 36.913s

15. Robin Frijns          Hilmer                 + 42.125s

16. Rio Haryanto          Addax                  + 43.235s

17. Jon Lancaster         Hilmer               + 1m03.893s

18. Marcus Ericsson       DAMS                 + 1m04.258s

19. Alexander Rossi       Caterham             + 1m04.735s

20. Kevin Giovesi         Lazarus              + 1m05.044s

21. Nathanael Berthon     Trident              + 1m05.468s

22. Daniel Abt            ART                  + 1m06.174s

23. Simon Trummer         Rapax                + 1m07.413s

24. Sam Bird              Russian Time             + 1 lap

25. Tom Dillmann          Russian Time            + 3 laps

Jean-Eric Vergne – 10th: “My first Q3 of the season feels pretty good, even if I would have preferred it to keep raining right until the end. But even in the dry I got a good lap in, but I aborted my very last lap as I wasn’t able to improve. I think this is about where we should be having improved the car still further, which means we are making progress race by race. I believe that our performance in race conditions tomorrow should be better than it was now in qualifying so we will be hoping for a good result, whatever the weather. Anything can happen on this track so we can definitely aim for points tomorrow. Getting into Q3 is good but there are no points given out in qualifying, so we still have to concentrate and produce a strong performance tomorrow.”

Daniel Ricciardo – 12th: “I am disappointed with that qualifying, as I think this afternoon was a missed opportunity. I really wanted Q3 today and with the mixed conditions, the opportunity was there. But we weren’t quick on the Inters and after that I felt we could have done better with the Super Softs, maybe if I’d got in one more lap to get the tyres up to temperature better, so we still have some work to do now. I feel the car has got a good pace on a long run, certainly better than in qualifying, but with the difficulty in overtaking here, starting twelfth is not ideal. So now we need to come up with a good strategy to try and make up for this afternoon.”

James Key – technical director: “The fact that it rained only slightly made the conditions very difficult to judge and, of all places, at Monaco all the complexities of this track made it even more complicated. The team in the garage and on the pit wall did a fantastic job to manage the situation, to make the right calls and predictions with the right tyres. Both drivers coped with it extremely well. It was a fantastic effort from Jean-Eric, who was on good form this morning, after we made a lot of changes since Thursday. Even if the times in FP3 were nothing special, we could see we were in reasonable shape. He thoroughly deserved to get into Q3, controlling his driving in these difficult conditions really well. It could have been even better if the rain had come at the end instead of the beginning. Daniel sadly just missed out on Q3, as he did not feel the grip level in the car quite as much as his team-mate, but he made progress since Thursday. We are now in a position where both cars can fight for points tomorrow.”

Paul Hembery: “Qualifying got off to a tricky start as the drivers were immediately confronted with wet conditions for the first time all weekend in Q1, making it difficult to judge the amount of grip available – particularly as some parts of the circuit were much wetter than others. Generally we saw that the track got a lot quicker as each session went on, making the timing of each qualifying run absolutely crucial.

“As usual track position will be the key to a good result here tomorrow, but there is always scope to use a creative strategy to move further up the order. However, if the uncertain conditions continue tomorrow then the strategies will be blown wide open. We’re still expecting to see more track evolution over the course of the weekend. Whether or not the drivers opt for one or two stops will depend on the speed of their cars and the track position they can maintain; we’re not expecting wear or degradation to be a significant issue. Congratulations to Mercedes for a one-two on the grid; it will be interesting to see what they do with their strategies as they aim to convert this result into a race win.”

Jenson Button described McLaren as its “own worst enemy” as a fuel pump problem prevented a strong showing in the last segment of Monaco Grand Prix qualifying.

After finishing fifth in Q1 and eighth in Q2, Button was unable to mount a proper challenge in Q3, thanks to what was later revealed to be an issue with his car’s fuel pump.

He wound up ninth, two spots behind his McLaren team-mate Sergio Perez.

“I think we did a good job in terms of getting out on the right tyres at the right time and the pace was good, but it doesn’t really matter when you have an issue at the end,” said Button.

“I’m ninth and that’s it. We’re our own worst enemy it seems. You eventually get the car working well and we’ve done everything right this weekend and then you have an issue like that in Q3. It’s not easy at the moment.”

Button predicted that making progress in the race will be difficult.

“I think getting in the top five from being ninth will be a massive difference. But when you want to do your own strategy and ideas in the race, you can’t if you’re team-mate is ahead of you. So it’s going to be a tough afternoon.”

Nico Rosberg says his chances of winning the Monaco Grand Prix will come down to how much Mercedes has improved its tyre wear.

Despite taking his third pole position in a row, the German is keeping his optimism in check ahead of Sunday’s race, citing his car’s tyre-chewing performance in Spain two weeks ago as a genuine concern.

“I’m happy to be starting first, [but] in Barcelona we were struggling a lot in the race, [finishing] 70 seconds behind the race winner.

“We are improving, but it is difficult to understand the tyres and get the most out of them. We’re improving step-by-step, but there are still a lot of questions marks remaining.

“It will be difficult tomorrow, it is our weakness. Hopefully better than Barcelona, but it is still a weakness. It could also be a bit better than expected – let’s wait and see.”

Rosberg added that the start will be key, and that getting through the first corner in the lead is a must.

“The start will be important, to get to the first corner first,” he said.

“I have the advantage as I am first, after that we have to see how it goes, who is quickest with strategy.”

Sebastian Vettel says he and Red Bull Racing need to run their own race on Sunday if they are to beat Mercedes in the Monaco Grand Prix.

The reigning Formula 1 world champion will start the race third, behind Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton.

And while overtaking is notoriously difficult in Monaco, Vettel is confident that the race can be won if his team can get the strategy right.

“There are a lot of laps here,” he said.

“But it is difficult to overtake. It always depends where you are, [but] on track it can be difficult.

“Hopefully Mercedes will struggle, but we cannot rely on that. Tyre wear for sure will play a role tomorrow, but we need to look after ourselves first. We will see what happens and then make the right calls.

“Our target tomorrow is to win.”

Vettel also praised the team for making huge improvements to the car since Thursday’s practice sessions.

“We saw on Thursday our performance was not great, I wasn’t feeling the car and therefore today I was much happier.

“Overall I was happy with the lap. On Thursday it did not look like we were anywhere close to the first two rows, so I am happy with the result and confident for tomorrow.”

Fernando Alonso reckons he will have to just try to beat his title rivals in the Monaco Grand Prix, as he doubts he can win the race from sixth on the grid.

As Mercedes took another front row lockout, Alonso found himself back on row three, with championship opponents Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen third and fifth, split by Mark Webber.

“I think it’s going to be difficult tomorrow,” Alonso admitted.

“It’s not the best qualifying position if you want to fight for the race win.

“Nothing is impossible in Formula 1, but it’s going to be very unlikely that we’ll fight for the victory tomorrow.”

Alonso is currently third in the standings, 17 points behind Vettel and 13 down on Raikkonen.

“The second main target is to finish in front of our competitors in the championship, so Kimi and Sebastian, and this is perhaps possible,” he added.

“I start on the same row as Kimi and Sebastian is just one row ahead, so with a good start and good strategy we can do it.”

Lewis Hamilton insisted just being on the front row for the Monaco Grand Prix was a relief as he had struggled more in practice than on any previous Monte Carlo visit.

The 2008 world champion was outqualified by his Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg for the third consecutive race, as the German continued his pole streak.

“I have been struggling all weekend, just struggling with the car,” said Hamilton.

“It’s the first time I have had that experience in Monaco since 2005.

“Every year I was on it, didn’t have any problems.

“I am really happy to be here, to lock out front row for the team. It’s just a massive improvement for me considering all the [practice] sessions.”

Hamilton admitted that being consistently outpaced by Rosberg was not ideal, but denied it troubled him.

“It is a new situation for me, one that I seem to be dealing with pretty well,” he said.

“I have had good seasons here in the past in terms of being on the pace [against team-mates] and this is definitely the worst.

“I need to correct this and as soon as I am able to extract the maximum from the car in the next few races hopefully you will see the true pace.”

World Rally Championship leader Sebastien Ogier has admitted racing in Monaco this weekend is a dream come true as he joins Sebastien Loeb in the Porsche Supercup field.

Ogier starts his first race in a 911 14th on the grid, but the Frenchman says just being at the meeting is more than he ever expected.

“I used to come here to watch practice on a Thursday with my dad,” said Ogier, “it was too expensive to come during the race. But now my dad will come on Sunday to watch me.

“It’s like a dream come true to race around these streets. If somebody had told me this was going to happen a few years ago, I would have said: ‘Yeah, dream on…”

Born and brought up in Gap, Ogier is familiar with Monaco from both the WRC round and the grand prix – he has twice worked at the track as a fire marshal on the race weekend.

But on Sunday morning he will be racing and he starts two places ahead of arch rally rival Loeb.

“It would be nice to be the first rally driver home,” he said, “but I’m just looking forward to the race. I don’t have so much experience, I tested the car for half a day at Hockenheim two weeks ago and this is only my second race.”

Despite his limited experience of the car and circuit, Ogier is aiming for a top-10 finish.

“I only did one practice start in this car,” he said, “so the start will be really important.

“The top 10 would be good. I had no target, really – there are a lot of specialists here and it’s hard to come and fight with them. I think I can still gain some pace during the race. We have to see what happens.”

Loeb’s qualifying run in his second Supercup race of the season was spoiled by traffic.

“I was almost in despair,” said the nine-time world champion. “I didn’t get one free lap. At one point I was on the way to a new fastest time, but suddenly two cars stood in the middle of the track.”

Briton Sean Edwards starts from pole.

Nico Rosberg claimed his third Formula 1 pole position in a row in Monaco Grand Prix qualifying, as Mercedes fended off Red Bull’s challenge to fill the front row again.

After practice sessions that had suggested a Mercedes versus Ferrari battle, Red Bull raised its game in a qualifying session that began damp and remained drizzly until the end.

Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber were provisionally first and second following the first Q3 runs, and with the rain appearing set to increase, it looked like Red Bull might have the front row sealed.

But Mercedes found more pace in the last seconds, with Lewis Hamilton first leaping to the front on a 1m13.967s, and then Rosberg pipping him by 0.091 seconds.

Vettel was 0.013s down on Hamilton as he denied Webber third place.

Kimi Raikkonen took fifth for Lotus, while Ferrari had a tough session.

Fernando Alonso could only manage sixth, and his team-mate Felipe Massa did not take part at all as the damage from his practice three crash could not be repaired in time.

McLaren’s Sergio Perez and Jenson Button were seventh and ninth, split by Adrian Sutil’s Force India.

Jean-Eric Vergne completed the top 10 in a strong performance for Toro Rosso.

There was an element of lottery to getting into the top 10 as Q2 came to a frenetic end, with everyone diving for slicks in the final four minutes and then trying to get the best out of an ever-quicker track.

Romain Grosjean was among those to lose out. His 13th place was an anti-climax after a star Q1 performance, when he had shot to the front briefly on the single flying lap he had time for once Lotus had repaired his practice crash damage.

The other big story of Q2 was Giedo van der Garde’s effort. The Dutchman got Caterham through Q1 for the first time in 2013 and was a top-10 factor when Q2 was at its most slippery.

He eventually ended up 15th, beating Q1 pacesetter Pastor Maldonado’s Williams. Maldonado was two places behind team-mate Valtteri Bottas.

Also out in Q2 were Nico Hulkenberg and Daniel Ricciardo, who share row six.

Paul di Resta was left enraged with Force India’s tactics as he missed the Q1 cut and ended up 17th. Esteban Gutierrez also fell in the first segment, behind Charles Pic in 19th.

Jules Bianchi will join Massa on the back row, having parked on his out-lap with a fire in his Marussia’s airbox.

Pos Driver                Team                  Time      Gap       

 1. Nico Rosberg          Mercedes              1m13.876s

 2. Lewis Hamilton        Mercedes              1m13.967s + 0.091s

 3. Sebastian Vettel      Red Bull-Renault      1m13.980s + 0.104s

 4. Mark Webber           Red Bull-Renault      1m14.181s + 0.305s

 5. Kimi Raikkonen        Lotus-Renault         1m14.822s + 0.946s

 6. Fernando Alonso       Ferrari               1m14.824s + 0.948s

 7. Sergio Perez          McLaren-Mercedes      1m15.138s + 1.262s

 8. Adrian Sutil          Force India-Mercedes  1m15.383s + 1.507s

 9. Jenson Button         McLaren-Mercedes      1m15.647s + 1.771s

10. Jean-Eric Vergne      Toro Rosso-Ferrari    1m15.703s + 1.827s

Q2 cut-off time: 1m17.748s                               Gap ** 

11. Nico Hulkenberg       Sauber-Ferrari        1m18.331s + 2.343s

12. Daniel Ricciardo      Toro Rosso-Ferrari    1m18.344s + 2.356s

13. Romain Grosjean       Lotus-Renault         1m18.603s + 2.615s

14. Valtteri Bottas       Williams-Renault      1m19.077s + 3.089s

15. Giedo van der Garde   Caterham-Renault      1m19.408s + 3.420s

16. Pastor Maldonado      Williams-Renault      1m21.688s + 5.700s

Q1 cut-off time: 1m26.095s                                Gap * 

17. Paul di Resta         Force India-Mercedes 	1m26.322s + 2.870s

18. Charles Pic           Caterham-Renault      1m26.633s + 3.181s

19. Esteban Gutierrez     Sauber-Ferrari        1m26.917s + 3.465s

20. Max Chilton           Marussia-Cosworth     1m27.303s + 3.851s

21. Jules Bianchi         Marussia-Cosworth

22. Felipe Massa          Ferrari

107% time: 1m29.293s

* Gap to quickest in Q1

** Gap to quickest in Q2

John Bryant-Meisner will contest this weekend’s British Formula 3 International Series races at Silverstone with his boost button disconnected after comfortably outpacing the competitors who are eligible for points in qualifying.

The Swede ran unrestricted in the Saturday morning session, during which he recorded a speed-trap figure on the Hangar Straight that was 6.2mph faster than Jordan King, who topped the lap times in the International Class.

AUTOSPORT understands that the Anglo-Swedish Performance Racing squad that runs Bryant-Meisner’s car instantly worked with series officials on a fair solution. The result is that the boost button, which is run in the German F3 Cup in which the team normally competes, cannot be used.

We have also learned that Bryant-Meisner, who will start races one and three from pole, will do his utmost not to interfere with those who are fighting for championship points.

The decision partly alleviates concerns from King.

“If they kept full power all the time that wouldn’t be a problem,” the Englishman said immediately after the session. “But if he only has a few boosts available for the race then he could keep coming back to us. I just don’t want to get tangled up with him.”

Felipe Massa’s Ferrari should be repaired in time for Monaco Grand Prix qualifying, but will have to take a five-place grid penalty for a gearbox change.

The Brazilian had a huge crash at Sainte Devote in final practice, hitting the left-hand barriers on the approach to the corner before sliding head-on into the armco at the turn itself.

Ferrari’s initial analysis of the accident suggests it was down to driver error, after Massa locked up on a bump.

There is no indication of a mechanical problem contributing to the crash.

Ferrari is working to repair the car in time for qualifying. It estimates that Massa should be able to get out for the final minutes of Q1.

A gearbox change will be necessary, though, resulting in a penalty.

Fernando Alonso was fourth fastest in the other Ferrari in practice three.

Invitation Class runner John Bryant-Meisner took a double pole for the opening round of the British Formula 3 International Series at Silverstone, but Jordan King was fastest of those who are eligible for points.

Bryant-Meisner, whose Performance Racing Dallara uses the spec Volkswagen engine from the German F3 Cup fitted with a boost button, was 0.837 seconds clear of King’s best.

“It’s hard to know how much quicker our car is,” said the Swede, who sat out most of the 2012 season due to breaking his back in a testing shunt. “I’m just here to get as much track time as possible.”

NEWS UPDATE: Bryant-Meisner has boost disconnected

King’s Carlin Dallara-Volkswagen leapt to the top of the FIA-rules F3 cars when the Englishman fitted his second set of tyres.

Team-mate Nicholas Latifi was fastest at the midpoint, when all the leading runners pitted for new Cooper rubber, but an off at Becketts on his first flying lap on new tyres damaged the floor and he could not improve. The Canadian dropped to seventh overall, but on second-best times, which decide the grid for race one, he finished up third.

The other Carlin runner, Welshman Jann Mardenborough, will start both races from the third row.

Will Buller’s return to Fortec Motorsport ended with his Dallara-Mercedes taking third overall, but he drops to sixth on the race one grid. Team-mate Felix Serralles will start Sunday’s final race from fifth, but moves up to fourth for this afternoon’s event.

A much-improved performance from Indonesian Sean Gelael, for the first time returning to a circuit he knows, ended with him planting his Double R Racing Dallara-Mercedes in fourth fastest position overall. Antonio Giovinazzi was fastest of the Double R trio in the first half of the session, but a suspected engine problem meant he slid down the times.

Ed Jones was quickest by just over a second in the National Class with his European F3 Open-spec Team West-Tec Dallara-Toyota. The Anglo-Emirati took both class poles but ended the session with damage after an accident.

Second in class for Sunday’s final race is another West-Tec Dallara, that of New Zealander Chris Vlok, although it is Chinese driver Sun Zheng, in the conventional British F3 National Class-spec Mugen-powered CF Racing Dallara, who will start from that spot on Saturday.

Race one grid:

Pos  Cl     Driver               Team/Car                    Time       Gap

 1.  Inv    John Bryant-Meisner  Performance Dallara-VW      1m54.313s

 2.         Jordan King          Carlin Dallara-VW           1m55.247s  + 0.934s

 3.         Nicholas Latifi      Carlin Dallara-VW           1m55.431s  + 1.118s

 4.         Felix Serralles      Fortec Dallara-Merc         1m55.441s  + 1.128s

 5.         Jann Mardenborough   Carlin Dallara-VW           1m55.520s  + 1.207s

 6.         Will Buller          Fortec Dallara-Merc         1m55.606s  + 1.293s

 7.         Felipe Guimaraes     Fortec Dallara-Merc         1m56.025s  + 1.712s

 8.         Sean Gelael          Double R Dallara-Merc       1m56.150s  + 1.837s

 9.         Antonio Giovinazzi   Double R Dallara-Merc       1m56.290s  + 1.977s

10.         Tatiana Calderon     Double R Dallara-Merc       1m56.980s  + 2.667s

11.  Nat    Ed Jones             West-Tec Dallara-Toyota     1m57.407s  + 3.094s

12.  Nat    Sun Zheng            CF Dallara-Mugen            1m59.041s  + 4.728s

13.  Nat    Chris Vlok           West-Tec Dallara-Toyota     1m59.064s  + 4.751s

14.  Nat    Roberto la Rocca     West-Tec Dallara-Toyota     1m59.222s  + 4.909s

15.  Nat    Cameron Twynham      West-Tec Dallara-Toyota     1m59.595s  + 5.282s

16.  Nat B  Alice Powell         Mark Bailey Dallara-Toyota  1m59.893s  + 5.580s

17.  Nat    Liam Venter          West-Tec Dallara-Toyota     2m00.689s  + 6.376s

18.  Nat    Sean Walkinshaw      West-Tec Dallara-Toyota     2m00.980s  + 6.667s

19.  Nat    Huan Zhu             West-Tec Dallara-Toyota     2m02.487s  + 8.174s
Race three grid:
Pos  Cl     Driver               Team/Car                    Time       Gap

 1.  Inv    John Bryant-Meisner  Performance Dallara-VW      1m53.882s

 2.         Jordan King          Carlin Dallara-VW           1m54.719s  + 0.837s

 3.         Will Buller          Fortec Dallara-Merc         1m54.929s  + 1.047s

 4.         Sean Gelael          Double R Dallara-Merc       1m55.161s  + 1.279s

 5.         Felix Serralles      Fortec Dallara-Merc         1m55.266s  + 1.384s

 6.         Jann Mardenborough   Carlin Dallara-VW           1m55.312s  + 1.430s

 7.         Nicholas Latifi      Carlin Dallara-VW           1m55.383s  + 1.501s

 8.         Felipe Guimaraes     Fortec Dallara-Merc         1m55.755s  + 1.873s

 9.         Antonio Giovinazzi   Double R Dallara-Merc       1m56.175s  + 2.293s

10.         Tatiana Calderon     Double R Dallara-Merc       1m56.880s  + 2.998s

11.  Nat    Ed Jones             West-Tec Dallara-Toyota     1m57.350s  + 3.468s

12.  Nat    Chris Vlok           West-Tec Dallara-Toyota     1m58.419s  + 4.537s

13.  Nat    Roberto la Rocca     West-Tec Dallara-Toyota     1m58.875s  + 4.993s

14.  Nat    Sun Zheng            CF Dallara-Mugen            1m58.928s  + 5.046s

15.  Nat    Cameron Twynham      West-Tec Dallara-Toyota     1m59.062s  + 5.180s

16.  Nat B  Alice Powell         Mark Bailey Dallara-Toyota  1m59.819s  + 5.937s

17.  Nat    Sean Walkinshaw      West-Tec Dallara-Toyota     2m00.548s  + 6.666s

18.  Nat    Liam Venter          West-Tec Dallara-Toyota     2m00.548s  + 6.666s

19.  Nat    Huan Zhu             West-Tec Dallara-Toyota     2m02.486s  + 8.604s

Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg completed his clean sweep of Monaco Grand Prix practice session top spots by leading a crash-strewn hour on Saturday morning.

The German’s 1m14.378s lap was nearly seven tenths of a second clear of the rest of the field, although the latter part of the session was interrupted by crashes for Felipe Massa, Romain Grosjean and Adrian Sutil, causing two red flags.

Massa’s accident was the first and the biggest.

He locked up his Ferrari’s front wheels at the start of the Sainte Devote braking area, slamming into the barriers on the left-hand side approaching the corner before going into the wall on the outside of the turn. The Brazilian got out unhurt.

Shortly after the restart, Sutil lost control of his Force India through Massenet, sliding sideways into the wall.

That did not require a stoppage to clear up, and in the gap between incidents that followed, Grosjean was one of the few to get a quick time in, jumping to second.

But on his final run the Lotus driver braked too late into Sainte Devote after possibly being distracted by Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes rejoining from the pits.

Grosjean slid sideways into the barriers in a repeat of his Thursday crash.

With only a minute of the session remaining, the red flag brought the morning to a close.

Rosberg managed to get a sublime lap in between the shunts, moving comfortably clear of the field despite clouting the barrier at Portier as he got his Mercedes sideways out of the corner.

Grosjean retained second, ahead of Sebastian Vettel – who had been quickest before the field switched to super-softs, but encountered traffic on a potentially quick late run.

Fernando Alonso’s Ferrari and Hamilton completed the top five.

Kimi Raikkonen had a harmless trip down the Mirabeau escape road before taking sixth, followed by Mark Webber, Paul di Resta, Pastor Maldonado and Nico Hulkenberg.

Pos Driver                Team                  Time        Gap         Laps

 1. Nico Rosberg          Mercedes              1m14.378s               22

 2. Romain Grosjean       Lotus-Renault         1m15.039s   + 0.661s    13

 3. Sebastian Vettel      Red Bull-Renault      1m15.261s   + 0.883s    17

 4. Fernando Alonso       Ferrari               1m15.286s   + 0.908s    17

 5. Lewis Hamilton        Mercedes              1m15.311s   + 0.933s    20

 6. Kimi Raikkonen        Lotus-Renault         1m15.380s   + 1.002s    19

 7. Mark Webber           Red Bull-Renault      1m15.550s   + 1.172s    20

 8. Paul di Resta         Force India-Mercedes  1m15.594s   + 1.216s    17

 9. Pastor Maldonado      Williams-Renault      1m15.861s   + 1.483s    15

10. Nico Hulkenberg       Sauber-Ferrari        1m15.926s   + 1.548s    25

11. Sergio Perez          McLaren-Mercedes      1m15.958s   + 1.580s    23

12. Jenson Button         McLaren-Mercedes      1m15.976s   + 1.598s    19

13. Jean-Eric Vergne      Toro Rosso-Ferrari    1m15.976s   + 1.598s    21

14. Daniel Ricciardo      Toro Rosso-Ferrari    1m16.060s   + 1.682s    16

15. Adrian Sutil          Force India-Mercedes  1m16.068s   + 1.690s    12

16. Felipe Massa          Ferrari               1m16.105s   + 1.727s     8

17. Esteban Gutierrez     Sauber-Ferrari        1m16.427s   + 2.049s    26

18. Valtteri Bottas       Williams-Renault      1m16.933s   + 2.555s    17

19. Charles Pic           Caterham-Renault      1m17.902s   + 3.524s    20

20. Giedo van der Garde   Caterham-Renault      1m18.102s   + 3.724s    20

21. Jules Bianchi         Marussia-Cosworth     1m18.706s   + 4.328s    22

22. Max Chilton           Marussia-Cosworth     1m19.228s   + 4.850s    22

Nico Muller took his maiden Formula Renault 3.5 pole position in qualifying for this weekend’s Monaco Grand Prix support race.

The Draco driver grabbed top spot in the final minute of qualifying, taking the place away from Lotus’s Marco Sorensen.

Muller and Sorensen managed to put fancied runners Stoffel Vandoorne and Antonio Felix da Costa – who have both already won races this season – in the shade after the title-chasing pair had set the early pace in the second group of split qualifying.

Muller’s time was also comfortably quicker than Jazeman Jaafar, who had topped the first group for Carlin following a fierce battle with championship leader Kevin Magnussen.

As the leaders of their respective sessions, Muller and Jaafar will share the front row.

Sorensen will lead the second row away, with his Danish countryman Magnussen the top title contender starting alongside him in fourth.

Next up should have been Stoffel Vandoorne, who was third fastest in the second group. However, the McLaren junior has a five-place grid penalty for crashing under yellow flags in free practice.

The rest of the top 10 is made up by debutant Carlos Sainz Jr, Norman Nato and Will Stevens (third to fifth in the first group), da Costa and former champion Mikhail Aleshin (fourth and fifth in the second group).

GP3 racer Sainz was close to causing an upset in the first session, where he went fastest overall in the middle sector of his last lap.

However, he made a mistake in the second part of the Swimming Pool section and bounced over the kerbs, ruining any chance he had of topping the session.

Qualifying positions to follow

Omar Soto found himself in unfamiliar territory in 2013 Season 1 (actually Season 1C to be precise): atop the iRacing.com Mazda Cup standings.  The Spaniard had come close to previous racing titles in the past, taking a pair of thirds in the 2012 S4 Star Mazda and Radical Challenge series, not to mention claiming the Cadillac Cup time trial crown in 2012 S2.  But the Mazda Cup title was his first overall racing championship since joining iRacing in March of 2012.  And he earned it, to say the least, with 62 wins in 65 starts to outdistance Martin Lammert in the points race.

It might be awhile before Soto finishes a season atop the standings again, as 2013 S2 finds him  devoting considerable energies to the iRacing.com Grand Prix Series where wins don’t come easily . . . for anyone.  They certainly haven’t for Soto, who finds himself P33 in the iGPS standings at the moment and still looking for his first top five finish of the young season.  That will come, however, if last season’s record of three top fives in five outings in the Williams-Toyota FW31 is any barometer.  And while it will take some doing to even come close to that 62 win mark in the Mazda Cup season, don’t be surprised if Soto finishes atop the iGPS the podium before long.

Q:     How long have you been sim racing?
A:    My first racing game was Super Monaco GP on Sega Mega Drive, later Ridge Racer Type 4 and Gran Turismo on PSX. I played all games of Gran Turismo, but GT5 disappointed me a lot in terms of simulation. Trying to look for a PC simulator, Daniel López recommended me iRacing. I tried and loved it. My first wheel was Driving Force GT, later a Logitech G25 and nowadays I have a G27.

Q:     What attracted you to iRacing?
A:    His massively multiplayer online racing and the variety of championships you can race at.

Q:     What are favorite iRacing cars/tracks?
A:    Williams FW31, Mazda MX5 and Radical SR8 / Road America and Watkins Glen.

Q:     What do you like most about iRacing?
A:    The way you can create your own virtual racing career, racing on scanned and realistic tracks with great physics, and the most important thing: the possibility to race for fun or race seriously on competitions where the drivers are very fast, like the iRacing World Championship.

65 starts and 64 top fives in 2013 S1C? What’s with the one non-top five?

Q:     What would you change about iRacing?
A:    I’d say the force feedback,  this aspect needs to be improved (especially in the FW31).

Q:     How many hours a week do you spend on iRacing?
A:    Too many LOL. Let’s say about 20 hours.

Q:     Tell us about the paint schemes on your helmet/car(s).
A:    I like changing it. Now I have a new design inspired on Valentino Rossi helmet.

Q:     What other sim racing activities (Forza, Gran Turismo, rFactor, etc.) do you do?
A:    Nowadays, only iRacing. But I sometimes play rFactor2 and Assetto Corsa too.

“I took the outside line at the Carousel and was able to pass him in order to win the race. I got 252 points and the third position on the championship standings.”

Q:     What are your favorite video games?
A:    Metal Gear Solid 3 and Pro Evolution Soccer 6.

Q:     Do you do any real world racing? Has iRacing been of any benefit?
A:    No, I don’t. Not lucky enough to do that.

Movin’ on up to iGPS.

Q:     What is your most memorable iRacing moment?
A:    One race in the Star Mazda Championship at Watkins Glens. It was the high SOF race. I started fifth. It was a perfect race, overtaking all drivers and finally, on last lap, catching the leader and racing side-by-side with him in the back straight. I took the outside line at the Carousel and was able to pass him in order to win the race. I got 252 points and the third position on the championship standings.

Q:     What is the iRacing moment you’d love to forget?
A:    Season 2 2012, V8 Supercars Series at Mosport. I did something really so stupid!

Q:     What car/track would you like to see iRacing add to the service?
A:    Bathurst (which is coming soon though) and some Spanish’s tracks like Montmeló or Motorland.

Q:     What person, living or dead do you most admire?
A:    Ayrton Senna and Valentino Rossi.

Q:     What’s your favorite real world racing series?
A:    F1 and MotoGP, but also I watch GP2, V8… too many series to watch and not enough time for all.

Q:     Name the title of the most recent book you read.
A:    I usually read sports media and I follow my favourite football  team, FC Barcelona.

Omar Soto’s office.

Q:     Name of your favorite movie/TV show?
A:    Movies: James Bond, The Dark Knight, Star Wars, Matrix / TV Shows: Top Gear.

Q:     How many of your close friends are iRacing members?
A:    None of them.

Q:     Has competing with iRacers all around the world influenced your opinions/outlook on life/world events? How?
A:    No, it hasn’t.

The IndyCar Road Open Series strength of field of 2205 saw 11 drivers take the green flag with only three finishing on the lead lap. Points leader Nico Brandt (DE-AT-CH) started on pole, had the fastest lap of 1:31.726 seconds, and led 43 out of 44 laps as he continued in dominant form. Brandt’s cushion to second place finisher Denis Garese (France) was 50.297 seconds, although the Frenchman at least had the consolation of leading a lap. The podium was rounded-off by Will Lamb (Carolina), finishing as the last car on the lead lap 59.205 seconds behind Brandt.

One good airfield deserves another; from Silverstone the IndyCars head to Sebring.

The results see iRacing.com IndyCar Road Open setup series points leader Brandt extend his points total to 380 with Lamb (312) and Jussi Nieminen (Finland) rounding-out  the top three on an even 300 points. The fourth position (254) is held by Garese who only has two weeks counted towards the points, tied with Garese is Paul Stolber (DE-AT-CH).

The iRacing.com IndyCar Fixed Road series sees Dan Giang (Au/NZ) lead the points with 361, ahead of James Andrew (UK/I) with 342 and Michael Talacka (UK/I) with 334.  Sebastian Mach (DE-AT-CH) is fourth position (310) and rounding out the top five is Ivan Sole (Siberia) with 304 points.

Next week the iRacing.com IndyCar Road Racing goes to Sebring International Raceway, another former airstrip where the bumps could send a car skipping on the pavement and into a wall.  The question is:  Who will keep their car from taking a flight and take victory at Sebring International Raceway? Tune in to find out!

Paul Menard has secured his Richard Childress Racing NASCAR Sprint Cup seat for the long term after family firm and main sponsor Menards agreed a new ‘multi-year’ deal with the squad.

Menard has driven for RCR since 2011, taking his maiden Cup win in that year’s Indianapolis round.

He is currently 10th in the standings after a consistent start to his 2013 campaign.

Team boss Richard Childress welcomed the news of Menard’s return.

“It is great to have Paul Menard back in the #27 Menards Chevrolet as our driver,” he said.

“He has shown his ability to be consistent, competitive and win at the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series level.”

Menard is currently one of three full-time RCR Cup drivers, alongside Jeff Burton and Kevin Harvick. The latter has already announced that he will leave in 2014, when he is expected to join Stewart-Haas.

Peter Dempsey took the win in an extraordinary finish to the Freedom 100 Indy Lights race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

The Irishman was sitting in fourth and just barely hanging on to the leaders at the start of the final lap, but he and Gabby Chaves both got a great run on lead pair Carlos Munoz and Sage Karam coming out of the final corner.

They were four-wide as they approached the finish line, with Belardi driver Dempsey hanging to the outside and just getting his nose across the line first to take the win by a mere 0.0026 seconds.

Chavez was second ahead of Schmidt team-mate Karam and Andretti racer Munoz.

Until the final corner, the race had been all about the Munoz and Karam battle. The latter had started from pole, but Munoz was clamped to his rear from the opening lap and ducked out of the slipstream to take the lead on lap 12.

He was unable to shake Karam off though, and there was only a sliver of daylight between the pair during the race.

Chaves also flirted with the idea of attacking the lead duo at one point, but lost touch before he had a proper chance.

Title contender Jack Hawksworth was one of only two retirees; the Briton falling out of the race after glancing the wall at Turn 4.

Earlier, Kyle O’Gara lost control and hit the barrier at the same corner.

Results to follow

Grand-Am boss Jim France Jr will give the start at the Le Mans 24 Hours next month.

The invitation to France to wave off the cars at 3pm on June 22 follows a firming up of the relationship between United SportsCar Racing, which is being formed out of the merger of Grand-Am and the American Le Mans Series for next season, and the Automobile Club de l’Ouest at Le Mans.

It was announced in March that United SportsCar will be able to award two guaranteed entries for Le Mans in 2015 in a continuation of the link between the ALMS and the ACO.

France, son of NASCAR founder Bill France Sr, said: “I will be waving the flag to start next month’s 24 Hours on behalf of the entire North American sportscar community.

“It demonstrates the universal interest in the consolidation of America’s two leading road-racing organisations.

“The worldwide racing community is already anticipating the debut of United SportsCar Racing at the 2014 Daytona 24 Hours, with its close association to the ACO and link to Le Mans.”

ACO president Pierre Fillon explained that the move “proves just how close the links are between the club that created endurance racing and the authorities of North American motorsports”.

ALMS founder Don Panoz, who started the 2003 event, will symbolically hand over the flag to France ahead of the race.

Jim France Jr becomes the second member of the France family to wave the flag at Le Mans: his brother, Bill France Jr, was honorary starter in 1976.

Aston Martin Racing will field a full factory car in next weekend’s British round of the Blancpain Endurance Series at Silverstone.

A solo Aston Martin V12 Vantage has been entered for the race on June 2 in preparation from AMR’s proposed assault on the Spa 24 Hours Blancpain blue-riband at the end of July.

The car, which finished 10th in the Nurburgring 24 Hours last Sunday and Monday, will raced by AMR factory drivers Darren Turner, Stefan Mucke and Frederic Makowiecki.

AMR team principal John Gaw said: “After the car came through the 24 Hours at the ‘Ring intact and didn’t use all its mileage, because it was parked in the garage for eight hours overnight [after the race was red-flagged courtesy of rain and fog], it made sense to do Silverstone. It is the perfect preparation for Spa.”

Gaw stressed that AMR’s deal to run at Spa on July 27/28 in conjunction with the Belgian GPR Racing squad had yet to be signed off.

AMR has yet to announce who would take two of the seats in the factory Spa entry alongside long-time Aston driver Turner.

Mucke will drive the AMR-run Beachdean Vantage in the 24 Hours, while Makowiecki is unavailable because he is racing for the Dome Honda team in Super GT at Sugo that weekend.

Simon Pagenaud set the fastest time on Carb Day at Indianapolis as the cars made their final on-track appearance before Sunday’s 500-mile race.

Schmidt Peterson driver Pagenaud moved to the top of the timing screens in the final minutes with a 225.827mph effort, bettering the 225.304mph lap that had been laid down by Andretti’s EJ Viso a few minutes earlier.

Reigning IndyCar champion Ryan Hunter-Reay claimed the third-fastest time.

AUTOSPORT’s special Indy 500 feature package

The morning was an encouraging one for Honda, which recovered from being routed in qualifying last week to get six cars into the top 10.

Prior to Viso’s lap, Honda entrants had held sway, with Ganassi’s Dario Franchitti and Scott Dixon occupying the top spot for much of the session.

Ana Beatriz caused a brief stoppage when she was caught out by a slow-moving Carlos Munoz while trying to enter the pits and ran into the back of the Andretti car, earning herself just enough damage to sideline her from the rest of the session.

There was also a spot of late drama when Ryan Briscoe’s car suddenly slowed on the back straight just after the chequered flag.

The Ganassi driver steered it toward the grass verge, whereupon it immediately caught fire. Safety teams were quick to respond and the situation was quickly brought under control.

Tony Fernandes believes he held Caterham’s Formula 1 progress back by trying to do too much himself, but now reckons the team’s structure is sorted.

After a troubled period for both his F1 team and football club QPR, Fernandes says he has had plenty of time to reflect on where he could have done better.

And although denying that he has diluted his efforts by getting involved in too many projects – including AirAsia, Tune, QPR, and Caterham – he concedes that he should have let others do more.

What exactly has Caterham got right?

“I don’t think I spread myself too thinly but I should have delegated more, as I do in my other companies,” he said, during a visit to the Monaco Grand Prix to announce a tie-up between his Tune Group and ADS Securities.

“I am not that involved in my other businesses as much, and I should have been like that.

“But this is the danger of passion conflicting with common sense. You get excited and carried away and you throw away all the things you are good at – like planning and analysing.”

GETTING CATERHAM RIGHT

Fernandes caused a stir on Twitter earlier this year when he suggested fans of relegated QPR should be patient because it had taken three years to get Caterham “right”.

Some cynics questioned exactly what he had got ‘right’ at Caterham, still to score a point since entering F1 in 2010.

Fernandes stands by what he wrote though, explaining it referred to the internal structuring of the team, not its results.

“Are we 100 per cent where we want to be? No. We have a nice facility at Leafield, we are beginning to make our own production, so we are in the right direction,” he said.

“I am not saying we are going to be world champions soon, but I do believe that if we continue this way then we have a good chance.”

CHANGE OF PLANS FOR 2013

Fernandes believes that Caterham made a mistake last year in trying too hard to master the blown diffuser.

But, after initially planning to write off this season so it could concentrate all its efforts on 2014, he says more resources are being diverted back to this year to capitalise on current windtunnel gains.

“I knew it was going to take a long time,” Fernandes said. “Last year was definitely a blip, it was a disappointment.

“I thought this year we would definitely be in the midfield. And, if we hadn’t screwed up last year, we should have been. But it is all about learning.

“We tried to be too clever last year with the blown diffuser and that screwed us up, whereas if we just continued on the normal pattern we would probably have been in the midfield by now.”

He added: “We have to stop developing this car very soon, but we have extended it because we smell the midfield now.

“If we can carry on we will definitely be in the midfield, but we have to stop at some stage to work on the 2014 car. We don’t have the resources to build two cars at the same time.”

Fernando Alonso remains favourite to win the Monaco Grand Prix on Sunday, according to players of the Castrol EDGE Grand Prix Predictor, in spite of the Mercedes drivers’ domination of Thursday’s free practice.

Forty per cent of the GPP players reckon the Ferrari driver will secure back-to-back victories following his win in Spain two weeks ago. That’s eight per cent more than have opted for Sebastian Vettel.

Interestingly only 10 per cent of players think a Mercedes driver can win the race. Both Lewis Hamilton (seven per cent) and Nico Rosberg (three per cent) have been strong in qualifying this year but suffered tyre degradation in the races.

The GPP experts Karun Chandhok and Timo Glock reckon that the Mercedes pair could be more of a factor in Monaco, where qualifying is critical and overtaking is at a premium.

“The Mercedes cars have been very fast over one lap and also in the slow-speed corners like sector three in Barcelona,” said Chandhok. “All this means that they should be odds on for another front row lockout as Nico and Lewis are both very fast at Monaco.

“The tricky bit will be if the team decide to play the hare and tortoise game by asking whoever is second to hold up the pack as overtaking is pretty much impossible while the leader runs away. If I was on the pitwall I would certainly be thinking about it!”

Glock agreed, adding: “I’ve bet on a victory for Rosberg, he grew up in Monte Carlo and knows every corner. In addition, his Mercedes is fast in qualifying – and that’s important here because overtaking is almost impossible.”

You can make your predictions for the Monaco Grand Prix by going to www.gppredictor.com, or by adding the GPP app and signing on through Facebook. It’s free and easy to play and you can win prizes like the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 in every race.

Caterham has confirmed it will stick with Renault engines next season, as the French car manufacturer closes in on finalising its 2014 Formula 1 supply plans.

Renault has not yet officially announced any of its deals for the new V6 turbos next year, but the situation is expected to move forward in Monaco this weekend.

While it is a no-brainer that Red Bull will be staying with Renault for another campaign thanks to its close ties with Infiniti, there has been intrigue about the identity of the other Renault teams for 2014.

AUTOSPORT analysis: the race for 2014 F1 engines

Toro Rosso is expected to announce later this weekend that it will be switching from Ferrari to Renault next year, while Caterham owner Tony Fernandes dismissed talk that he was evaluating options elsewhere and said his outfit would be staying with the French car manufacturer.

“We have a car partnership with Renault,” said Fernandes in Monaco on Friday. “Our F1 car is going to be replicated in a road car, so you see a Renault engine with DRS and KERS in a Caterham.

“We are a long-term partner. It is not just about the racing team, it is about a business, and the car business is integral.”

WILLIAMS SET TO PART WITH RENAULT

One of the issues Renault’s customer teams have faced is a big hike in engine fees for next year, with the French carmaker’s power unit price believed to be the most expensive in F1.

It is understood the cost factor is why current Renault-powered team Williams is closing in on a deal to switch to the cheaper Mercedes engines for 2014, while Lotus is also evaluating its options with Mercedes and Ferrari.

Fernandes conceded that the financial situation in F1 was not ideal, especially since his outfit originally joined the sport at a time when the promise was for costs to come down.

“From the moment I came in that is something that has been a disappointment,” he said about costs.

“When [former FIA president] Max Mosley first spoke to us about F1, the costs were supposed to be going down.

“You cannot blame one person for that, but the sport itself. For a new investor, the costs were [supposed to be] going down – and they have actually gone up.

“We had free tyres before, we now pay for them. Engines are going up too.”

Former Formula 1 driver Narain Karthikeyan has announced he will leave the Zele Racing Auto GP team with immediate effect.

Karthikeyan had been rapid in his maiden Auto GP season but said frustration over results lost to unreliability and pitstop problems prompted him to pursue alternative career avenues.

“I have known [team boss] Michael Zele a long time and he is a great guy,” Karthikeyan told AUTOSPORT.

“I don’t have a problem with Michael or anyone else, and the car has been pretty OK in Monza and then Marrakech, but we’ve just had too many errors in the pitstops.

“It was one thing after another going wrong, and I can’t afford to do that. There was a sure win and two podiums that we have lost, and it has been a pretty bad start to the season for me.”

Top of Karthikeyan’s list of opportunities to pursue is a move to the Le Mans Series’s LMP2 class, although the former Jordan and HRT grand prix driver has not ruled out switching teams and remaining in Auto GP.

“We are trying to get an LMP2 programme together,” said Karthikeyan. “Nothing is close, so I don’t want to name potential teams. The likelihood of the Le Mans 24 hours happening [this year] is 50-50, so I might still do something in Auto GP.”

Karthikeyan is sixth in the Auto GP drivers’ standings, 64 points behind series leader Kimiya Sato.

“I knew it was going to be tough with no testing, but we overcame that in [round one at] Monza and I drove a strong race after I had problems in qualifying,” he said.

“The second race I could have been really fast in the rain but then a master cylinder packed up on the warm-up lap.

“In Marrakech I could have won easily. I had the pace, but we had a 27-second pitstop. The second race, OK, there was a racing accident when I got involved with another driver. I have some responsibility as well.

“Then in Hungary we had a really bad weekend and that was when I wanting to leave.”

Should Karthikeyan’s Le Mans plans fall through, he doubts he has time to find another Auto GP seat before the next round at Silverstone on June 1-2 as he has commitments with backer Tata in India.

“If the Le Mans thing doesn’t happen I need to keep driving so I will probably go and do Auto GP again, but Silverstone might be too close,” he said.

Monaco GP2 feature race victor Sam Bird voiced his relief to even be in the event after being caught up in the first-corner incident.

Bird required a new rear wing on his Russian Time car before the restart of Thursday’s race due to Kevin Ceccon hitting him at Sainte Devote during the 14-car shunt.

The stewards adjudged that polesitter Johnny Cecotto Jr caused the accident when he braked too late and took Fabio Leimer with him into the barriers, and have suspended him from the rest of the meeting.

Bird admitted that he initially thought his afternoon was over when his car was damaged.

“It was great to be in control for the whole thing,” said Bird. “We were actually very fortunate as well. We had a big hit at the start from behind with Ceccon.

“We were very lucky to be able to secure a new rear wing during the red flag. Without it, I would have DNF-ed the race. We were very, very lucky in that respect.”

Bird won the race by 22 seconds once he had passed early leader Mitch Evans, who was running a different tyre strategy, during the pitstop cycle.

“Once the race got underway, we had the pace from the start,” said Bird. “The pace was never a worry so this was very good.”

The victory is Bird’s third in GP2, and his second this season.

“It’s an amazing to be able to win my first GP2 race in Monaco,” he added. “Maybe I should have done it already in the past in GP2, but it felt pretty right today.”

M-Sport’s Ford Fiesta R5 will make its World Rally Championship debut on Rally Finland at the end of July.

Reigning WRC Academy champion Elfyn Evans will drive the car on the Jyvaskyla-based event.

More Fiesta R5s are expected to be seen on later rounds of the WRC with almost 20 orders taken for the British-built cars.

“It’s mega to be going to Finland in the car,” said Evans, who has already given the R5 its competitive debut on a national rally in Britain.

“I’ve done Finland twice before and after struggling the first time around, I won the Academy there last year and – because I didn’t do Rally GB last year – that one was probably my favourite event.

“It’s a dream come true to take a four-wheel drive rally car like the Fiesta R5 to Finland.”

Prior to Finland, Thierry Neuville will drive the Fiesta R5 non-competitively on the biggest rally in his Belgian homeland – the European Rally Championship qualifying Ypres Rally at the end of June.

Johnny Cecotto Jr has been barred from the rest of the Monaco GP2 weekend as a punishment for triggering the first-corner crash in Friday morning’s feature race.

After making a poor start from pole, the Arden driver braked too late while trying to fend off team-mate Mitch Evans into Sainte Devote and skated into the barriers, taking title contender Fabio Leimer with him.

Chain reaction incidents behind ended up collecting 14 cars and causing a red flag. Nine of those involved were unable to take the restart.

Cecotto’s driving had previously attracted controversy in Malaysia – where he forced Sam Bird off the road in qualifying and was disqualified from the session – and Spain, where he pulled across on Sergio Canamasas while trying to defend his position in the second race. That incident did not result in a penalty.

Bird went on to win the Monaco race ahead of Kevin Ceccon and Evans.

Esteban Gutierrez believes he must improve his ability to pull out extra pace on qualifying laps.

The Mexican had a strong weekend in the Spanish Grand Prix two weeks ago, where he was generally only a couple of tenths off team-mate Nico Hulkenberg.

But in the final run of qualifying, the German was able to extend that gap to just over four tenths of a second.

“In qualifying, it’s a matter of finding a little but more between each run and that’s where I need to work,” said Gutierrez when asked by AUTOSPORT about Hulkenberg’s ability to pull out more time.

“There was not a big gap during qualifying [in Spain], just the last run was more than two tenths.

“It is a challenge to put a perfect lap together, it’s a matter of confidence and something that will come with time.

“I am going to work on that in the next few races to try to close the gap.”

The Mexican, who endured a difficult start to the season, is determined to carry over the momentum from his strong Barcelona weekend into Monaco.

He made a promising start to the event, ending Thursday practice with a best lap just one tenth of a second off Hulkenberg.

“The most important thing is to keep the same rhythm and the same mentality,” he said.

“The main pressure comes from myself and the first person that wants a good result is me.

“If I make a mistake, I know what I did and if I do things right, I know how I did things right.

“It’s a matter of finding the right balance and when you find that, like we did in Barcelona, you try to continue in that direction.”

Round Seven of the 2013 iRacing.com World Championship Grand Prix Series is set for Saturday, May 25 at Watkins Glen.  The online race will be broadcast on iRacing.com/live beginning at 14:00 GMT (10:00 am EST).

With his fourth win on the season at Sebring fortnight ago, Greger Huttu solidified his strangle-hold on the 2013 iWCGPS title chase.  The two-time World Champion and now stands more than 100 points clear of all but 2011 champion Hugo Luis who, with wins at Spa and Phillip Island, is the only other driver to visit the winners circle so far this season.  Although Luis will be looking to make inroads on Huttu’s advantage on Saturday, history suggests he has a tough row to hoe as Huttu has an unblemished record on three previous WDC events at The Glen.  Meanwhile,  Atze Kerkhof, Martin Krönke and Jake Stergios are out to solidify their bid for third place in the standings, while Max Dell’Orco – a contender in the past couple of races — could be on the verge of a breakthrough performance.

Be sure to take see Foracer Ajira Racing’s track guide to Watkins Glen, then catch all the action Saturday, May 25 at 14:00 GMT (10:00 am EST) on iRacing.com/live.  In the meantime, stay in touch with all the teams and drivers on our World Championship website at www.wcs.iracing.com.

Formula 1 drivers are not alone in facing headaches due to high-degrading tyres this year, because even the engine manufacturers are finding they need to work twice as hard.

The impact of Pirelli’s more aggressive products in 2013 has been huge, with the role of the tyres still the number one talking point among teams and drivers at this stage of the campaign.

Yet the quest to look after tyres has extended far beyond simply deft driving and a fine-tuning of car set-up, because it has also extended as far as the software set-up of engine torque maps.

Renault’s head of trackside engineering Remi Taffin has revealed that his engineers have had to at least double their workload when it comes to ensuring that the engine characteristics do not lead to excessive tyre wear.

“I think the big change with the emphasis on tyre wear is that we are working twice or three times more on driver torque maps than we were last year,” said Taffin, when asked by AUTOSPORT about the impact the current tyres were having on engine useage.

“Now we are trying to get every single corner right, and you try and get every single lap of the race right. So you have to get more than one map this year to suit the drivers.

“If last year we were spending 25 per cent of our time on this, then this year it is maybe 50 per cent.

“It is due to the fact that we know that it will be paying off more than something else, so due to the time constraints we put our energy on this.”

The current engine freeze in F1, allied to widespread rule stability, means that engine makers like Renault are having to dig deeper in to details like torque maps to try and seek out any advantage – especially when their work can impact on those crucial tyres.

Taffin added: “As soon as you haven’t got the torque you ask for you can lose the traction and, if you break traction, then you get the tyre wear. That is the critical point.

“Beyond that, you have the second layer which is the driver torque map. It is there normally to give the driver the same feelings throughout the race, so he knows when he goes out of Turn 13 that he has to apply 20 per cent of throttle even if the amount of torque being delivered is different.

“It means he always gets the same feeling and same efficiency from the tyre on every lap. That is the basic principle.”

Jean-Eric Vergne is paying tribute to French Formula 1 legend Francois Cevert by carrying his helmet colours in the Monaco Grand Prix.

The Scuderia Toro Rosso driver wore a helmet painted in Cevert’s distinctive colours, albeit with Red Bull logos incorporated.

It is the second time that the Frenchman has paid tribute to one of his countrymen in this way having carried Jean Alesi’s helmet design last year.

“I wanted to make another special helmet, last year I did Jean Alesi, this time Francois Cevert,” said Vergne when asked about his helmet by AUTOSPORT.

“It’s forty years since his death and his sister wrote a book about him this year, so everything makes sense.

“He was the first really famous French driver in F1 and was really well-liked in the paddock, so it is good to give him a tribute.”

Cevert was killed during practice for the 1973 United States Grand Prix when he crashed his Tyrrell.

He made his debut in F1 in 1970 and was destined to lead the Tyrrell team in 1974 after team-mate Jackie Stewart retired.

Cevert won one F1 race, the 1971 United States Grand Prix, and his best finish at Monaco was fourth.

Vergne hinted that he plans to continue this the tradition of honouring a former French legend if he has the opportunity next season, but has yet to decide who.

“I don’t know, I have one year to think about it,” he said.

Lotus driver Kimi Raikkonen also carried a tribute to 1976 world champion James Hunt during practice.

The top of his helmet featured an image of Hunt with the words “James Hunt 1976 world champion”.

But he is now set to have to cover this up because FOM restrictions on use of lettering facing the onboard camera mean it could be construed as advertising.

Raikkonen said yesterday that “as far as I know” he was going to continue to use the helmet all weekend when asked about it by AUTOSPORT.

Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel was also on the spotlight for his special helmet design this weekend.

The Red Bull driver is using heat-activated paint that makes the bikini of the pin-up girl on the back of his helmet vanish as it gets warmer.

Jordan King topped free practice at Silverstone ahead of this weekend’s British Formula 3 International Series opener.

In a damp opening session, the Englishman and his Carlin Dallara-Volkswagen lapped over a second quicker than the Double R Racing Dallara-Mercedes of Italian Antonio Giovinazzi.

With track conditions and tyre choice varying, times were well spread out in this session.

Third-placed Felipe Guimaraes, who has joined the Fortec Motorsport Dallara-Mercedes team for British F3 only, was 2.1s slower than King, but narrowly edged out his team-mate, Fortec returnee Will Buller.

Jann Mardenborough, fifth in the morning’s one-hour session, went fastest in the afternoon as conditions deteriorated further. In a short run in between the first and second of three red flags, the Carlin-run Welshman leapfrogged King and Giovinazzi.

Giovinazzi was fast but had an incident, while Nicholas Latifi caused a red flag and Tatiana Calderon had the accident that brought testing to a premature conclusion.

Ed Jones was comfortably the fastest of the National Class runners in his European F3 Open-spec Team West-Tec car, heading the CF Racing Dallara-Mugen Honda of Sun Zheng.

West-Tec’s Roberto la Rocca missed the second session, while MSV F3 Cup leader Alice Powell had a delayed flight on her return to the UK and only got out when conditions were at their worst in the afternoon.

Pos Driver              Team/Car                           Time    

 1. Jordan King         Carlin Dallara-VW F312             2m01.688s

 2. Antonio Giovinazzi  Double R Dallara-Mercedes F312     2m02.777s

 3. Felipe Guimaraes    Fortec Dallara-Mercedes F312       2m03.836s

 4. Will Buller         Fortec Dallara-Mercedes F312       2m03.879s

 5. Jann Mardenborough  Carlin Dallara-VW F312             2m03.976s

 6. Felix Serralles     Fortec Dallara-Mercedes F312       2m04.273s

 7. Sean Gelael         Double R Dallara-Mercedes F313     2m04.829s

 8. Nicholas Latifi     Carlin Dallara-VW F312             2m06.375s

 9. Ed Jones            West-Tec Dallara-Toyota F312*      2m06.435s

10. Tatiana Calderon    Double R Dallara-Mercedes F312     2m07.342s

11. John Bryant-Meisner Performance Dallara-VW F310***     2m08.410s

12. Sun Zheng           CF Dallara-Mugen F311*             2m08.953s

13. Chris Vlok          West-Tec Dallara-Toyota F312*      2m10.276s

14. Huan Zhu            West-Tec Dallara-Toyota F312*      2m12.435s

15. Cameron Twynhan     West-Tec Dallara-Toyota F308*      2m13.605s

16. Liam Venter         West-Tec Dallara-Toyota F308*      2m15.754s

17. Roberto la Rocca    West-Tec Dallara-Toyota F312*      2m16.409s

18. Sean Walkinshaw     West-Tec Dallara-Toyota F308*      2m21.032s

19. Alice Powell        Mark Bailey Dallara-Toyota F306**  2m26.549s

* National Class

** National B Class

*** Invitation Class

Sam Bird won round seven of the GP2 Series in Monaco, his second victory of the season with the new-for-2013 Russian Time team – but required a new rear wing to do so having been savaged in the chaotic initial start.

The race was marred by a first-corner pile-up that involved 14 cars and took out polesitter Johnny Cecotto Jr (who sparked the chaos himself) as well as frontrunners Fabio Leimer, Jolyon Palmer, Robin Frijns, Marcus Ericsson and Alexander Rossi.

The event was red-flagged with nine of those cars unable to restart.

The restart took place under the safety car, with Mitch Evans up front in his Arden entry. Bird, in his repaired car after taking a big hit from Kevin Ceccon at the first start, was right on Evans’s case from the green flag on lap two.

Evans had switched to the super-soft tyre during the red flag, and it was clearly a struggle to keep Bird, on the softs, at bay.

Evans did so, however, keeping the Briton behind him before pitting on lap 13. His strategy meant he had to change all four tyres to the soft compound, whereas when Bird pitted four laps later he only had to change his soft rears.

Evans’s slower stop meant that Ceccon, who had a new front wing fitted during the red flag, managed to jump him after opting for an early pitstop.

But with Rene Binder taking a long first stint running second on the road, Ceccon was never able to glimpse a view of Bird, who scampered away to win by 22s as he added a GP2 Monaco win to last year’s Formula Renault 3.5 triumph in Monte Carlo.

Bird’s only scare came when he clipped the kerb exiting Portier soon after his stop, his car fishtailing perilously closely to the Armco.

Ceccon came under pressure for second from Evans in the closing stages, but pulled away as Evans needed to keep an eye on Felipe Nasr, who had detached himself from a fight with James Calado.

Nasr had one eye on the points race, however, closing the gap to leader Stefano Coletti to 15 with his fourth place.

Coletti finished sixth, ahead of Binder (a fine run after restarting 15th), while Adrian Quaife-Hobbs pulled off a last-lap move on Stephane Richelmi to grab reversed-grid pole position for Saturday’s sprint race.

Results – 42 laps (inc red flag delay):

Pos  Driver               Team                    Time/Gap

 1.  Sam Bird             Russian Time        1h36m15.919s

 2.  Kevin Ceccon         Trident                + 22.077s

 3.  Mitch Evans          Arden                  + 23.225s

 4.  Felipe Nasr          Carlin                 + 23.416s

 5.  James Calado         ART                    + 29.588s

 6.  Stefano Coletti      Rapax                + 1m00.519s

 7.  Rene Binder          Lazarus              + 1m02.449s

 8.  Adrian Quaife-Hobbs  MP                   + 1m08.400s

 9.  Stephane Richelmi    DAMS                 + 1m12.107s

10.  Daniel de Jong       MP                   + 1m22.410s

11.  Tom Dillmann         Russian Time         + 1m29.356s

12.  Jon Lancaster        Hilmer                   + 1 lap

13.  Simon Trummer        Rapax                    + 1 lap

14.  Jake Rosenzweig      Addax                    + 1 lap

15.  Sergio Canamasas     Caterham                + 2 laps

16.  Daniel Abt           ART                     + 2 laps
Retirements:
     Rio Haryanto         Addax                    26 laps

     Johnny Cecotto Jr    Arden                    0 laps*

     Fabio Leimer         Racing Engineering       0 laps*

     Jolyon Palmer        Carlin                   0 laps*

     Julian Leal          Racing Engineering       0 laps*

     Robin Frijns         Hilmer                   0 laps*

     Marcus Ericsson      DAMS                     0 laps*

     Alexander Rossi      Caterham                 0 laps*

     Nathanael Berthon    Trident                  0 laps*

     Kevin Giovesi        Lazarus                  0 laps*
* Did not take restart

Nikolay Karamyshev has finalised a two-round World Touring Car Championship deal with the Campos SEAT squad.

AUTOSPORT revealed earlier this month that the Russian driver was in line to race in two of the events Hugo Valente is missing.

Karamyshev will make his debut in his home round at Moscow in a fortnight and stay on for the subsequent Porto street races.

He won the Super Production class title in last year’s European Touring Car Cup.

Valente will return for the non-European events in the second half of 2013.

IndyCar is planning rule changes that could result in breaking the speed record at Indianapolis, while continuing with its efforts to improve safety in the sport.

IndyCar officials met on Thursday ahead of this weekend’s Indianapolis 500 and announced they “will open the door to increased technical innovation” with the current car with the goal of managing increases in speed.

Arie Luyendyk still holds the record for the fastest lap at Indianapolis, despite having set it 17 years ago.

“We’ve achieved a great car platform, so now we can move forward to explore what’s next,” said Mark Miles, CEO of IndyCar and Indianapolis parent firm Hulman & Co.

“By managing improvements in certain components, speeds will gradually increase, and we could break the Indianapolis Motor Speedway track record by our 100th running in 2016.”

Luyendyk set the track record of 237.498 mph in 1996. This year’s pole position lap was a 228.762 mph.

IndyCar’s new president of competition Derrick Walker said the first “substantive announcement”, likely to involve aero kits, will be made soon.

“In the short term, we’ll look for incremental changes to our cars through components such as aerodynamics, horsepower and tyres,” Walker said.

“In a way, we’re going back to the future. IndyCars have always been about innovation and speed, and our goal is to open the door for that again.

“We’ll start with our current car platform and give our teams and suppliers more ability to affect how they race.

“We always have to be mindful of costs, but that doesn’t mean we can’t manage improvements to create more exciting racing and at the same time do it safely.”

Force India believes Pirelli should hold fire on making a final decision over changes to its Formula 1 tyres until after teams have tested the revised rubber at the Canadian Grand Prix.

Pirelli is currently trying to reach agreement with teams over tweaks to its rear tyres to try to prevent a repeat of recent delaminations.

Its preferred solution is to change the steel belt in the rear tyre for the Kevlar version that was used until the end of last year.

That tweak is likely to reduce the operating temperature of the rear tyre, which could help teams like Mercedes that have struggled with overheating.

The potential for a shake-up in the competitive order has left teams like Lotus and Ferrari nervous about agreeing to any changes – and Force India is going further and pushing for there to be no tweak at all.

With only a fortnight to go until the next race in Montreal, where Pirelli plans to introduce the new rear, Force India deputy team principal Bob Fernley thinks the final call should wait until after the Canadian GP.

“My view would be that we run with what we have, the 2013 tyres, and if Pirelli can get a set of test tyres that they want to look at in the meantime, then we should test them and evaluate them,” Fernley told AUTOSPORT.

CHANGES ‘ABOUT PIRELLI IMAGE’

Fernley said he understood Pirelli’s desire to avoid further delaminations, but equally said it would be unfair to force through tweaks on safety grounds.

“It is more to do with making sure the image of Pirelli is protected – quite rightly going forward – because they don’t want to see delaminating tyres,” he said. “It is not a safety issue.”

There have been suggestions that Force India could try to veto any tyre changes that it believes could hamper its performance, but Fernley made it clear his outfit was open-minded about the situation.

“I don’t think anything is running counter procedure, it is going through the correct process,” he said.

Formula 1 drivers are going to face as tough a challenge as the teams next year in adapting to the new technical regulations, reckons former champion Alain Prost.

As F1 gears up for the switch to 1.6-litre V6 turbo engines, Prost is in no doubts about the amount of work that is going to be needed for anybody to be successful in 2014.

“It is a big technical challenge – and the way it is done is going to be a challenge for the engineers making the engine for performance, reliability and everything; a big challenge for people working on the track, for the strategy; and a big, big challenge for the drivers too,” said Prost, in an interview with AUTOSPORT.

“It is not going to be like the old days where you had to slow down for the fuel consumption. It will be a bit different.

“The way you are going to use the engine, relative to the quantity of the fuel, and relative to the extra energy you get from the electrical side, will be a great challenge for the drivers and engineers.

“And you are going to have a different way of using it.

“We still don’t know how it will be today – but I think it is going to be interesting and very different.”

Prost, who is helping Renault in an ambassadorial role, reckons there is the possibility for one team to emerge dominant next year, but thinks that is nothing new to F1.

“It’s the first time for a long, long time that we have had such a big change,” he explained.

“You can never be sure if there is one fantastic idea or a good engineer has found something.

“But it is much more difficult today to find that idea than it was in the 1980s when Colin Chapman was around or people were using active suspension.

“In F1, if somebody finds a fantastic idea he is going to be successful and others are going to make a copy and get better. But you need to accept that.

“What would be good also, and we must accept the competition, is that if we have three big [engine] constructors next year – we are going to have four [in 2015] – that if somebody makes a better engine with the different technology and a different way of doing it and they have the success, then you have to say well done.”

Alain Prost believes Formula 1 should be celebrating the fact that the outcome of races is so uncertain now, rather than get drawn into criticisms of the show.

F1 has faced a barrage of complaints this year - from both competitors and fans – that its quest to deliver entertainment has gone too far.

Prost, who is in Monaco this weekend in his role as an ambassador for Renault, thinks it is too easy for people to hit out at the way races are playing out rather than stepping back and looking at the positives.

“At the end of the day, you must remember that people criticised a lot when one driver made the pole position, led the race and then nothing happened,” said the former world champion in an interview with AUTOSPORT.

“You want it somewhere in the middle and I think the compromise today is not bad – because at least we have a show.

“We have a long season, with a lot of uncertainty – and that is the most important for F1.”

Prost believes that the change to new 1.6-litre V6 turbo engines next year will also be a boost to F1, in providing another talking point for fans.

“If you have this new technology, it means you have something to sell also that is different to today,” he explained. “And if you still have the show, that’s even better.

“I don’t like to criticise too much. I think it’s very difficult. I was many times in commissions with the FIA and you know how difficult it is, especially when you are talking about money.

“If you want to reduce spending it’s very difficult to find the right things. So I don’t want to criticise too much.”

Prost, famously nicknamed ‘the Professor’ for the clever strategic approach he took to racing, does doubt that he would have been able to race that way in the current F1.

“I don’t know if I could do the same job,” he said. “I don’t think you can compare the tyres today to the tyres in my period.

“Even if you had only one manufacturer, to have more or less what we had in the 80s you would have to have two or three choices of compound and then you do what you want. With no obligation to stop.

“Now you only start the race with the tyres you qualify with, and that’s it. Even if you want to put hard tyres on the left and soft on the right you cannot. It’s different today.”

The Monaco GP2 feature race has been stopped after a 14-car first corner crash.

Polesitter Johnny Cecotto Jr made a poor getaway, allowing Arden team-mate Mitch Evans to lead.

Fabio Leimer challenged Cecotto for second as they braked for the first corner, where Cecotto braked too late and understeered into the barrier, with Leimer following suit and crashing over the back of him. Then Tom Dillmann went over the back of Marcus Ericsson.

Behind them, Kevin Ceccon speared into the back of Sam Bird, removing the Briton’s rear wing.

Jolyon Palmer was then spun around by Julian Leal, and they were collected by Robin Frijns, Alexander Rossi and caused the majority of the field to screech to a halt.

Bird has had a new rear wing fitted on the grid. The race is scheduled to restart at 12.10 local time.

Sage Karam edged out Carlos Munoz to take his first career Indy Lights pole at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Thursday.

In a session delayed three hours by rain, Karam went to the top with a two-lap average speed of 189.243mph, putting the Schmidt driver just ahead of Munoz’s 189.103mph effort.

“I can’t thank the team enough,” said Karam. “The team put a good car together for me. The rain threw a little bit of a curve ball.

“To get the pole is a surprise; we’ve been working really hard on the race set-up. Qualifying here isn’t as important as other tracks, but it’s definitely a confidence-booster.”

Munoz, who will start both the Lights race and the Indianapolis 500 from second on the grid, admitted that jumping between the Lights car and the IndyCar had made things a little trickier for him.

“It was totally different as I was used to IndyCar [and had] to go back to Indy Lights,” said the points leader.

“Here in Indy Lights, the qualifying is not as important as the tow in the race. We had so much fun last year in that race because we were overtaking all the time. But I am going one by one. I am focusing first on Indy Lights, then I will focus on the Indy 500.”

The Colombian’s closest title rival Jack Hawksworth ended up fifth on the grid behind Peter Dempsey and Gabby Chaves, but said that he was satisfied with his starting position.

“The car was pretty decent, and we’re pretty happy with it,” Hawksworth said. “The qualifying round doesn’t mean too much, so we can’t read too much into it. It’s going to be about what happens tomorrow.

“I was very happy with the race car the last time we ran it, so I think we’re in for a good race.”

Pos  Driver             Team              Speed

 1.  Sage Karam         Schmidt Peterson  189.243

 2.  Carlos Munoz       Andretti          189.103

 3.  Peter Dempsey      Belardi           188.793

 4.  Gabby Chaves       Schmidt Peterson  187.770

 5.  Jack Hawksworth    Schmidt Peterson  187.410

 6.  Kyle O’Gara        Schmidt Peterson  187.276

 7.  Zach Veach         Andretti          187.013

 8.  Juan Pablo Garcia  Moore             186.509

 9.  Chase Austin       Herta             186.261

10.  Jorge Goncalvez    Belardi           186.183

11.  Jimmy Simpson      Moore             185.967

Order set by average speed over two-lap run

Denny Hamlin took his first NASCAR Sprint Cup pole since his return from injury as he topped qualifying for Sunday’s 600-mile race at Charlotte.

Going into the latter stages of Thursday evening’s session, Kurt Busch appeared to have taken the second pole of the season for himself and the Furniture Row team, with no one able to challenge his 27.661-second lap.

But Hamlin was able to rustle up a 27.604s effort in his Joe Gibbs Toyota to deny Busch the top spot.

Busch held on to the outside front row position, as Matt Kenseth underlined Gibbs’ pace by securing third.

Mark Martin was on the provisional front row for a spell before falling back to fourth, just ahead of Michael Waltrip Racing team-mate Clint Bowyer.

Last year’s winner Kasey Kahne was sixth fastest in the best of the Hendrick entries.

Greg Biffle, Kyle Busch, Jamie McMurray and Ryan Newman completed the top 10, with everyone back to Busch below the previous track record.

Championship leader Jimmie Johnson and nearest points rival Carl Edwards will start 12th and 13th. Reigning champion Brad Keselowski was 20th.

Pos  Driver              Team/Car                     Time     Gap

 1.  Denny Hamlin        Joe Gibbs Toyota             27.604s

 2.  Kurt Busch          Furniture Row Chevrolet      27.661s  + 0.057s

 3.  Matt Kenseth        Joe Gibbs Toyota             27.679s  + 0.075s

 4.  Mark Martin         Waltrip Toyota               27.750s  + 0.146s

 5.  Clint Bowyer        Waltrip Toyota               27.763s  + 0.159s

 6.  Kasey Kahne         Hendrick Chevrolet           27.785s  + 0.181s

 7.  Greg Biffle         Roush Fenway Ford            27.801s  + 0.197s

 8.  Kyle Busch          Joe Gibbs Toyota             27.842s  + 0.238s

 9.  Jamie McMurray      Earnhardt Ganassi Chevrolet  27.879s  + 0.275s

10.  Ryan Newman         Stewart-Haas Chevrolet       27.887s  + 0.283s

11.  Dale Earnhardt Jr   Hendrick Chevrolet           27.915s  + 0.311s

12.  Jimmie Johnson      Hendrick Chevrolet           27.937s  + 0.333s

13.  Carl Edwards        Roush Fenway Ford            27.940s  + 0.336s

14.  Jeff Gordon         Hendrick Chevrolet           27.985s  + 0.381s

15.  Kevin Harvick       Childress Chevrolet          28.049s  + 0.445s

16.  Juan Pablo Montoya  Earnhardt Ganassi Chevrolet  28.083s  + 0.479s

17.  Martin Truex Jr     Waltrip Toyota               28.097s  + 0.493s

18.  Aric Almirola       Petty Ford                   28.106s  + 0.502s

19.  Marcos Ambrose      Petty Ford                   28.107s  + 0.503s

20.  Brad Keselowski     Penske Ford                  28.142s  + 0.538s

21.  Casey Mears         Germain Ford                 28.142s  + 0.538s

22.  Paul Menard         Childress Chevrolet          28.165s  + 0.561s

23.  JJ Yeley            Baldwin Chevrolet            28.274s  + 0.670s

24.  Danica Patrick      Stewart-Haas Chevrolet       28.298s  + 0.694s

25.  Tony Stewart        Stewart-Haas Chevrolet       28.303s  + 0.699s

26.  David Gilliland     Front Row Ford               28.322s  + 0.718s

27.  Jeff Burton         Childress Chevrolet          28.348s  + 0.744s

28.  Travis Kvapil       BK Toyota                    28.359s  + 0.755s

29.  Trevor Bayne        Wood Brothers Ford           28.360s  + 0.756s

30.  Ricky Stenhouse Jr  Roush Fenway Ford            28.385s  + 0.781s

31.  Joey Logano         Penske Ford                  28.414s  + 0.810s

32.  Michael McDowell    Parsons Ford                 28.426s  + 0.822s

33.  Dave Blaney         Baldwin Chevrolet            28.452s  + 0.848s

34.  Bobby Labonte       JTG Daugherty Toyota         28.511s  + 0.907s

35.  David Ragan         Front Row Ford               28.564s  + 0.960s

36.  Regan Smith         Phoenix Chevrolet            28.613s  + 1.009s

37.  David Reutimann     BK Toyota                    28.665s  + 1.061s

38.  David Stremme       Swan Toyota                  28.683s  + 1.079s

39.  Timmy Hill          FAS Lane Ford                28.706s  + 1.102s

40.  Joe Nemechek        NEMCO Toyota                 28.711s  + 1.107s

41.  Landon Cassill      Circle Sport Chevrolet       28.712s  + 1.108s

42.  Josh Wise           Front Row Ford               28.969s  + 1.365s

43.  Scott Speed         Leavine Ford                 28.623s  + 1.019s

Did not qualify:
     Mike Bliss          Humphrey Smith Toyota        28.690s  + 1.086s

NiSWC champion Ray Alfalla is slated to test a Mazda MX5 at Homestead.

Two time NASCAR iRacing.com Series World Champion Ray Alfalla is set to make his debut in a race car on Saturday, May 25 at Homestead-Miami Speedway, courtesy of fellow iRacer Ernie Francis Jr.  The youngest driver in the Pirelli World Challenge, the 15 year old Francis is making his Breathless Performance Products Mazda Miata available to Alfalla for a test session on the Homestead-Miami Speedway road course.

Alfalla is no stranger to Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Francis, who uses iRacing primarily for testing purposes, leads the points in the Pirelli World Challenge TCB (Touring Car B) competition following a clean sweep of last weekend’s triple-header at Circuit of the Americas.  Alfalla, age 24, has won nine races, two titles and $21,000 in NiSWC competition and is hoping this weekend’s test will prove to be the next step in his effort to transition to a professional racing career.

Francis is helping a fellow iRacer take the next step.

Jenson Button believes McLaren is in better shape for the Monaco Grand Prix, but that it needs to improve its qualifying pace to have a chance of taking advantage of that improvement.

Although the team remained in the lower part of the top 10 in Thursday practice, Button said his feeling with the troubled car on long runs was better than of late.

His only reservation was a fear that he would be too mired in the midfield to show that speed.

“The pace on the long run is surprisingly good,” Button said.

“Not that that matters much around here when you’re 1.2 seconds off the pace in qualifying…

“The problem is around here you have to qualify well, and that’s our weakness at the moment. We just can’t get the temperature in the tyre for lap one.

“There’s a lot of hard work over the next few days to find out how we get the performance on the first laps, because we haven’t got it yet.”

Although McLaren has brought further upgrades for Monaco, Button believes the car is also simply behaving better with the set-up required for the street track.

“I’m happier with the car here than in the last few races,” he said.

“There are some positives with areas that we’ve struggled in before, but seem a bit better.

“Because Monaco’s such a different race, you change the car quite a bit, and it seems to be working a little bit better.

“We’re still not setting amazing times, but I’m happier that we’re going in the right direction and I think that we can improve on Saturday.”

Paul Hembery: “With Monaco always being one of the circuits that has the most noticeable degree of track evolution during the weekend throughout the year, it’s hard to draw many firm conclusions from the first two free practice sessions, although there is already some idea of the pecking order. So far we’re seeing a difference of up to a second per lap between the two compounds, which is in line with our expectations at this point, but we would expect that gap to come down as the weekend goes on. More rubber going onto the track over the weekend also means that the cars will slide less: that in turn slows down the rate of wear and degradation even more – which is never especially high at Monaco anyway.

“So far, we’d say that the teams are on course to make two stops during the race – one seems very possible too – but we’ll have a much better picture after qualifying on Saturday, which is when we can make a more accurate forecast in representative track conditions. We saw today that as usual, traffic will play a key role in setting a quick time at Monaco, but the rapid warm-up time of the super-soft compound allows the cars to get up to speed very quickly and maximise their one-lap pace.”

Pirelli has warned teams that it will pull out of Formula 1 at the end of the year unless it gets an answer soon on whether they want a fresh contract from 2014.

Talks between the Italian tyre manufacturer and the teams about a new deal have stalled in recent weeks, and Pirelli says time is running out on it being able to produce tyres in time to be fully ready for the new 2014 regulations.

Paul Hembery, Pirelli’s motorsport director, said in Monaco on Thursday that F1 was facing an ‘extremely serious’ situation, and that if the matter was not resolved very quickly then his company would find it impossible to make new tyres in time.

“Apparently on September 1, we are meant to tell them [the teams] everything that they need to know with the tyres for next season, but now we are in mid-May,” he explained.

“You can imagine how ludicrous that is when we have not got contracts in place.

“Maybe we won’t be here…”

Pirelli is already understood to have agreed a commercial deal with F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone about remaining in the sport, but there has still been no word from the FIA about its plans to put the tyre contract out to tender.

Furthermore, Pirelli’s attempts to finalise individual contracts with the teams have been thwarted by a number of outfits being reluctant to accept the terms on offer.

Hembery said that his Pirelli bosses had already set an internal deadline for when they needed an answer.

And although he refused to divulge when that was, he said that teams had to wake up to the long lead time his company needed if it was going to be prepared to stay in F1.

“I have always said we will never declare an internal deadline but clearly time is already too late,” he said.

“Things are getting, as far as we can, extremely serious because the changes next year are substantial.

“The sport has to take a rapid decision because aside from having the fixed resources in the business involved in F1, there is also a technical job. We need to do a technical job as well.

“It is not just a case of maybe putting a harder compound on to this year’s tyres – the changes are so dramatic that we will need to do a thorough re-engineering of the tyre. That takes time, so the longer is goes on it makes our job impossible.

“There comes a time where we will not have time to do the job any more.”

Paul di Resta – 12th/10th: “A good day’s work, although there’s always lots to talk about after two sessions around Monaco. There are some improvements we can make to improve the balance, especially with the race in mind, and that’s something we will work on tonight and tomorrow. The tyre programme went well and we got as much data as we could, which is always the main focus for a Friday so I think we’re in good shape. My general feeling with the car is good and the work we’ve done today has taken us in the right direction.”

Adrian Sutil – 13th/11th: “It’s always a pleasure to come back to Monaco and drive a Formula One car at the limit – and for me it is two years since I last drove here. It did not take me long to find my rhythm again and things went pretty well. We made some progress between the two sessions and I’m feeling comfortable with the car. We know what the plan is for tomorrow and where we can improve to be ready for Saturday.”

Jakob Andreasen, Chief Race Engineer: “A fairly typical day of Monaco practice as we focussed on getting a good feel for the softest tyres in Pirelli’s range and letting the drivers build up their speed. In terms of tyres we feel comfortable with the amount of data we have on both compounds and it’s now a case of optimising the car for the weekend. It’s a rare luxury to have an extra day to analyse the data and we will make the most of the opportunity. Performance-wise, I would say we are in our usual position and the target for Saturday is to see both cars inside the top ten.”

Charles Pic – 20th/20th: “FP1 for me was ok. The steering felt a little light on the installation lap so we adjusted that, and then worked on dialling out the understeer I had on the first full run, and by run three we’d found a pretty good balance.

“That continued into the afternoon session and I’m pretty happy with how it ended. I didn’t get a clean run on the supersofts but on the long run we did on the options we found that we had quite good deg, good enough to give us some options for Sunday and the car felt good throughout the whole run.

“We ran an aero test last week, to help sort out a couple of the issues we found with the new package in Spain and in FP1 we ran further aero evaluation on what we learned at the straightline test. The initial results are good and that will give us even more to work on tonight, and give us more potential performance to extract tomorrow and on Sunday.

“Another really good thing today was that we found a balance that worked on both compounds quickly, so we were able to get everything we could out of both sessions. We didn’t have any issues that held us up, especially compared to the number of small problems we had in FP1 and FP2 in Spain, so that’s put us in a better position for Saturday and Sunday than we’ve been in all season.”

Giedo van der Garde – 19th/22nd: “I definitely enjoyed my first day in an F1 car in Monaco and I think we’ve made some good progress today. In FP1 the grip levels on track were as low as you’d expect, but it came in pretty well and by the end of the session it was possible to push round the whole lap. We had some issues with front locking and unfortunately I damaged a front wing on my third run, but other than that it was fine. We improved the traction throughout the session and started to dial out the oversteer I had on the first couple of runs.

“In FP2 the car immediately felt better after we’d made a couple of setup and parts changes, and the hotter track conditions helped the tyres come in more quickly so my first run was good. We went onto the supersofts and waited for a gap in the traffic but then on my quick lap the red flags came out when Romain’s accident damaged the barriers. That was bad timing as I was definitely on my fastest lap of the day and I think we’d have been looking at a time around the mid-1.17s, more representative of our real pace today. But, FP1 and FP2 aren’t about the quickest laps. They’re about what we did today which was work through the program, start to understand how to manage the tyres and generate as much data as we can for the guys to work on at the track and back at the factory. I’m sure Saturday we’ll show what we can do around here and I think the tyre strategies are going to make it very interesting!”

Kimi Raikkonen believes Lotus has the pace to match the single-lap speed of rival Mercedes in Monaco following the first two practice sessions on Thursday.

The Finn finished the morning session over 1.3 seconds off pacesetter Nico Rosberg, but reduced the gap considerably in the afternoon, finishing seven tenths behind the Mercedes driver.

Rosberg, who has started from pole in the last two grands prix, was the only man to lap in the 1m14s in the second session.

Raikkonen, however, sees no reason why Lotus cannot match Mercedes’ pace in qualifying, although the Finn is refusing to make predictions.

“I think yes, if we get all the things right,” Raikkonen said when asked by AUTOSPORT if Mercedes’ lap time was within reach.

“We will see. Why not? We see what happens on Saturday.

“You would think they will be very fast. Today they were very fast, but things can change. We have to wait and see. I have no interest to start guessing what can happen on Saturday.”

He added: “We have to see how it is in the morning. If it’s like this morning then it’s going to be a disaster. But we improved a lot and it’s getting better and better all the time.

The Lotus driver said starting from the two first rows of the grid will be crucial if he wants to have a shot at winning the race.

“If we want to win, probably yes,” he said.

GROSJEAN CONFIDENT DESPITE CRASH

Team-mate Romain Grosjean finished his day early after crashing against the barriers at Sainte Devote in the second session.

The Frenchman managed just 10 laps, but is confident the accident will not affect his performance this weekend.

“It is not a big deal. It’s a bit of a shame, as we lost some time, but the confidence is there,” he said.

“I locked when I was already into the corner so unfortunately there was nothing I could really do.

“I think it’s going to be tight. Fernando [Alonso] is quick, both Mercedes are, and I think we are, so it’s going to be a good battle.”

Fernando Alonso -2nd/3rd: “It’s always nice driving at Monaco, even if it’s very demanding, because here more than anywhere, you need to do a lot of running to adapt to the track and, in more general terms, get used to a very special race. I am pleased that we managed to get through all our planned programme today, which can’t always be taken for granted here as anything can happen! Even if the feelings are positive and we got through the day without any problems whatsoever, we still don’t have a clear idea of the pecking order in the field. We will have to wait a bit to see where all our rivals really are, because here too, until Saturday, no one pushes a hundred per cent: the barriers constitute too high a threat to take risks in the first free practice sessions. There’s not much time to do a tyre comparison here, we did only one and the results didn’t throw up any surprises: the super softs are a bit quicker and degrade more. All that remains now is to spend all the available time analysing the data we have gathered to try and find the best strategy for qualifying and the race.”

Felipe Massa- 4th/4th: “The weekend has got off on the right foot, the car behaved well and I managed to find a good pace. I finished in the top five in both sessions, which is important in such an unpredictable event as the Monaco Grand Prix. However, we are aware that we still have much work to do. Now we will analyse all the data available to try and find the right direction to go in, because here it’s vital to have a car that is both competitive in qualifying and performs consistently in the race. Mercedes has shown that it is quicker and it will not be easy to get ahead of them in qualifying, but I am sure we have what’s needed to take the fight to them.”

Stefano Domenicali: “In free practice for the Monaco Grand Prix, the priority is always to make the most of the time available to run on track: today we exploited all 180 minutes available and both Fernando and Felipe managed to complete a high number of laps, so as to gain confidence in this very unique track. In the morning, we concentrated on car set-up, adapting it to the slow and twisty corners that characterise the layout of this track. Here, one of the key factors is dealing with the traffic and that’s important right from Thursday. In the afternoon session, we worked on a comparison between the two compounds, gathering useful data which we will analyse tonight and tomorrow.”

Kimi Raikkonen – 11th/6th: “I was much happier at the end of today than this morning. We spent the first session getting the steering right as it wasn’t great at the beginning, then we changed a few things on the car and it felt far better. We’ve still got a few other areas to improve, but it was getting stronger with every run today. To get pole we have to make the car a bit faster overall and I have to drive a bit better, then we’ll have to see what happens.”

Romain Grosjean – 3rd/7th: “After a great start to the day it was a real shame to end things early. I didn’t have the grip I expected going into the corner, but there was nothing wrong with the car; my braking and entry speed were all wrong and I ended up hitting the barrier. There was no chance to let off and go straight on into the runoff area; I was committed to the corner so that was it. We have a very good car here and it gives you the confidence to push, but unfortunately I pushed a bit too hard. I’m sorry for the team and I definitely owe them all a drink for all the work that’s needed before Saturday. The grid looks very close, but we seem in good shape and I’m eager to get back out on track and fight for the top positions.”

Alan Permane, Trackside Operations Director: “We’re pretty happy about today. We had a little blip with Romain going into the wall and stopping him doing any long run evaluations in the afternoon, but Kimi completed plenty of laps so we have ample amounts of data to evaluate. Our pace looks good, both drivers are pretty happy with their cars and we’ve still got some improvements to make on both front end grip and single lap pace. There’s not too much damage to Romain’s car and we have plenty of spares so we’re not concerned on that front. That Romain’s fastest lap today was on the soft tyre illustrates his strong pace here, as there’s a second or even more to come from the super soft. Kimi’s a little further off getting the perfect set-up, but we know where the improvements should come from.”

Jenson Button – 8th/8th: “We struggled in the morning when the circuit was still fairly ‘green’ – we couldn’t get any temperatures into the tyres, but I think that affected everybody, not just us.

“Our pace on a long run looks surprisingly good, although we’re not quite there with our qualifying pace yet. Still, I feel happier with the car here than I have the past few weekends. There are some areas in which we’ve struggled before that now seem a little bit better, and that’s obviously positive.

“We may not be setting amazing times out there, but I’m happy that we’re heading in the right direction. And hopefully we can improve on Saturday from where we are today.”

Sergio Perez – 9th/12th: “We tried a lot of things during today’s practice sessions. Not everything worked; some of the things we tried made it difficult for me to feel confident with the car, especially through the faster corners. So we’ll come back on those changes before Saturday’s practice. Still, we had no nasty surprises either, which was positive.

“I’m hopeful we can make it into Q3. I actually think Saturday will be the most important day of the weekend – everyone will be trying to save tyres so as to have as few stops as possible in the race. It’s likely to be a slow race with low degradation, so we need to give it our all on Saturday.”

Martin Whitmarsh – Team principal, Vodafone McLaren Mercedes: “I always view getting two cars home unscathed after a day’s running around the tortuous streets of Monaco as a positive. It’s a circuit that takes no prisoners; where a moment’s late-braking, or an over-enthusiastic squeeze of the throttle, can easily wipe a corner from the car.

“Happily, both Jenson and Checo immediately found their groove so that we were able to conduct positive evaluative work during this morning’s session. The car is responding positively to set-up changes and we’re making progress.

“More encouraging still was our long-run pace in the afternoon session. However, of course, it’s clear that our toughest challenge of the weekend will come during qualifying, wherein our car’s pace is still too far from that of the pace-setters.

“Nonetheless, in Jenson and Checo, we not only have two excellent race drivers, but two men who know how to get the best from their cars when the stakes are high. They’ll go into qualifying with the utmost focus and determination to do their best for the team.”

Mark Webber – 7th/5th: “I think traditionally we’re never too electric here on Thursday’s, so today was actually one of the better ones we’ve had in the last few years. You’ve got to be very, very focused here; concentration is very, very high. It’s a challenging venue to pull everything together; we want to obviously get short run performance as well as gaining short and long run data, which I think we’ve got. There are some quick cars out there; we’ve seen that on Saturday at the last few GPs. All in all, a reasonably smooth day for us, we’ve got plenty to go through now.”

Sebastian Vettel – 10th/9th: “I think generally it was okay. Unfortunately we lost quite a lot of time in the afternoon while we were making some changes, but that can happen on Friday, or in this case Thursday. We’d like to be a little bit more competitive, so we need to try and find some more lap time. We had a KERS issue this afternoon, so I didn’t use the system during P2. The guys know what the problem was with that.”

Johnny Cecotto Jr will start round seven of the GP2 Series in Monaco from pole position after topping his qualifying session for odd-numbered cars.

But Arden team-mate Mitch Evans came within 0.016 seconds of toppling him in the second group.

The sessions were split in two, for odd- and even-numbered cars, to avoid the crashes that have occurred in recent years with all 26 cars on track simultaneously.

The flip-side was that drivers only had 15 minutes to set their times, so had just one run on the Pirelli super-soft tyres.

In Group A, last year’s feature race winner Cecotto looked ragged but it was resulting in some fantastic times.

He worked his way down to 1m21.141s, some 0.368 seconds clear of second-quickest driver, and free practice pacesetter, Sam Bird of the Russian Time team.

Trident’s Kevin Ceccon and Julian Leal (Racing Engineering) were next up.

In Group B, for even numbered cars, the fastest time swapped hands numerously between Tom Dillmann, Mitch Evans, Jolyon Palmer and Fabio Leimer.

Evans was at the top when the chequered flag fell, but his 1m21.157s was just 0.016s slower than Cecotto’s earlier mark.

Cecotto thus earned the Group A runners the cleaner left-hand side of the grid. He will start with Evans alongside him, with row two comprising Bird and Leimer (Racing Engineering).

Ceccon and Palmer (Carlin) will share row three, ahead of Leal and Dillmann (Russian Time).

Frontrunners Felipe Nasr and Robin Frijns will start ninth and 10th, with points leader Stefano Coletti down in 14th.

Pos  Driver               Team                Time

 1.  Johnny Cecotto Jr    Arden               1m21.141s  Group A

 2.  Mitch Evans          Arden               1m21.157s  Group B

 3.  Sam Bird             Russian Time        1m21.509s  Group A

 4.  Fabio Leimer         Racing Engineering  1m21.185s  Group B

 5.  Kevin Ceccon         Trident             1m21.986s  Group A

 6.  Jolyon Palmer        Carlin              1m21.198s  Group B

 7.  Julian Leal          Racing Engineering  1m22.092s  Group A

 8.  Tom Dillmann         Russian Time        1m21.387s  Group B

 9.  Felipe Nasr          Carlin              1m22.163s  Group A

10.  Robin Frijns         Hilmer              1m21.418s  Group B

11.  Marcus Ericsson      DAMS                1m22.349s  Group A

12.  Sergio Canamasas     Caterham            1m21.522s  Group B

13.  Alexander Rossi      Caterham            1m22.511s  Group A

14.  Stefano Coletti      Rapax               1m21.658s  Group B

15.  Rio Haryanto         Addax               1m22.589s  Group A

16.  Nathanael Berthon    Trident             1m22.245s  Group B

17.  James Calado         ART                 1m22.677s  Group A

18.  Stephane Richelmi    DAMS                1m22.317s  Group B

19.  Daniel de Jong       MP                  1m22.943s  Group A

20.  Rene Binder          Lazarus             1m22.376s  Group B

21.  Kevin Giovesi        Lazarus             1m23.006s  Group A

22.  Daniel Abt           ART                 1m22.716s  Group B

23.  Simon Trummer        Rapax               1m23.017s  Group A

24.  Jake Rosenzweig      Addax               1m22.842s  Group B

25.  Jon Lancaster        Hilmer              1m23.443s  Group A

26.  Adrian Quaife-Hobbs  MP                  1m23.328s  Group B

Pastor Maldonado – 6th/14th: This is one of my favourite circuits on the Formula One calendar. It’s always great to drive here. The practice session today was productive and we feel we have made some progress. The set-up in the two sessions was slightly different and it felt like things were slightly better in FP1. We will analyse everything tonight and tomorrow and choose the best configuration for the weekend ahead.

Valtteri Bottas – 17th/18th: The track here in Monaco is very challenging, but brilliant to drive. I was learning more and more with every lap and I feel like I’m really getting up to speed in my first time driving here. We have a lot of data from today that we will look at in order to find the correct balance for the car; hopefully we can look at everything and make a step forward for Saturday’s qualifying session.

Mike Coughlan, Technical Director: We were running different parts across the two cars this morning to try to improve our overall performance. We were happy with what we saw with Pastor’s car, but we made some changes this afternoon which didn’t work as we wanted, so we will be comparing the data from this morning to bring back the performance. Valtteri completed his planned programme today. He was learning the track at the start of FP1, but the tyres were degrading quickly so he wasn’t able to improve towards the end of the session. We need to improve our tyre management over the long runs for better consistency in the race, but we have lots of data to analyse over tonight and tomorrow.

Daniel Ricciardo – 18th/16h: “I really enjoy street circuits and this one in particular, however, this morning we were slower than we had hoped and expected to be. I’m sure if we find some more speed for Saturday then it will be even more enjoyable. Jev and I weren’t running the same settings and there is still a bit to come from myself as well, because you can always find a bit more performance from the driver on a street circuit. We now have one more day than usual to analyse everything and we also have some modifications we can make for Saturday. I am confident we can improve and I am still looking at getting into the top ten, but we have a bit of work to do to achieve that. As for the tyres, it’s the usual story that the Supersoft is quicker and the Soft is more consistent, but I do think that running Sunday’s race on a one stop strategy could prove more difficult than last year.”

Jean-Eric Vergne – 15th/17th: “It was a good day with a lot of laps completed. At this circuit, driver confidence is an important factor and you gain in confidence with every lap you do, feeling you can push harder every time. My last long run looked pretty good at the end of the afternoon session. Now we need to put all the best elements together so that we can improve our overall performance and I believe we can do well on Saturday, much better than the story told in today’s time sheet.”

Laurent Mekies (Head of Vehicle Performance): “Every year, the first time the cars go out on this unique circuit is something special. We ran different set-up philosophies across our two cars and in both cases we wanted to get in as many laps as possible. This had two purposes, firstly to get as much information to help in our understanding of what should be the best set-up on the cars, while also giving the drivers as much track time as possible, which is always an important factor here. We did this with a mix of short and long runs, all of them trouble free, so we got all the data we need to make the best choices for Saturday. It seems that we were a bit more competitive on the long runs than the short ones and, because here in Monaco, qualifying is so important, we will have to work tonight and tomorrow in shifting our performance towards the shorter run. The main positive element from today is that we ran reliably and therefore completed all our programme and have plenty of data to look at.”

Jules Bianchi – 21st/20th: “It has been a good day for us and I have really enjoyed my first experience of Monaco in a Formula 1 car. It was everything I imagined it to be and I am pleased that we have established a good baseline that we can build on during the rest of the weekend. The fact that we have no running tomorrow means that we have more time than usual to focus on the data we have gathered today, so we should be able to draw some good conclusions that will help us to prepare for Saturday and the race.”

Max Chilton – 22nd/21st: “This track is amazing in a Formula 1 car and just as exhilarating as I thought it would be. It has been a busy day but we were able to complete the full programme we had planned and I think we are reasonably confident based on what we have seen so far. Once again the big challenge will be managing the tyres through the race but the work we have done today means we have plenty of information to help us make good choices for the race.”

John Booth, Team Principal: “Both drivers have had a clean start to their Monaco debut in an F1 car. The programme we set out was based around giving them plenty of laps for circuit familiarisation, along with some more detailed tyre evaluations in FP2. We’re reasonably happy with the performance and pace of the car but there is definitely work to do to improve their race pace on the tyres. Fortunately we have the added advantage of an extra day to go through the information we have gathered today and at least we can be happy with the initial pace of the car.”

The iRNC invaded Charlotte for Week 3 of 2013 Season 2.

The inRacing News Challenge multi-class series headed into NASCAR territory for some classic draft racing at Charlotte, North Carolina in Week Three.  Charlotte Motor Speedway’s 2.25 mile road layout is the closest road racers will get to oval racing as running in packs is not only encouraged but required.

Last week at Summit Point new names moved up the leader board as several iRNC regulars disappeared and this week is no different.  In the Solstice series a new name took top honors while in Mazda there is a new overall leader.

Pontiac Solstice
Ilham Halabi (Asia) started the week off with a quick lap of 1:21.442 which was second best for the week.  He raced five times at Charlotte winning three and averaged 138 points which is also second place this week.  Halabi is still the overall point leader with a comfortable 92 point advantage.  The top spot this week goes to Dujon Boldrin (Brazil) as he remains perfect for the season winning all races entered and all laps led.  This week Boldrin qualified seventh overall, won his only online race with the highest point total of 182 and now is second in the overall standings behind Halabi.  Chris Hughson (New York) qualified eighth this week, won eleven of twelve races, averaged 128 points and currently sits third in the overall standings, 111 points behind Halabi.

Jared Jewell pulls away from the field en-route to a Solstice class win.

Mazda MX5 Roadster
Last season Lorenzo Leonetti (Italy) made a late charge but came up a few points short in the Mazda championship.  This year Leonetti’s red hot start in Mazda continues as he qualified second with a 1:21.913, won a huge race which paid 146 points and now is the overall point leader.  Second-placed Petr Dolezal (Central-Eastern Europe), with two consecutive Mazda titles to his credit, finds himself in unfamiliar territory but is only two points behind Leonetti overall.  Dolezal qualified number one this week with 1:21.710 and raced twice for a 114 point average at Charlotte.  Joe Pisciotta Jr (Florida) won seven of eight races and a 174 point win at Charlotte moved him up two spots to third in the overall standings.

In Time Trial Stephane Morien (Canada) averaged 1:23.657 in his Mazda and collected 100 points while John Newton (UK&I) ran 1:24.082 for second place and Juan Rodriguez (Florida) rounded-out the top three with a 1:24.210 average around Charlotte.

Notables: William Disdale (UK&I) had five wins in seven starts, averaged 128 points, and finished fifth for the week to take fourth in the standings.  Kyle Young (New York) posted a perfect week with eight wins in eight starts, leading 85% which is sixth for the week and he is currently seventh in the overall standings.

Vladimir Ozeretskovskiy spins his MX5 in Turn Four.

Mazda MX5 Roadster
Last season Lorenzo Leonetti (Italy) made a late charge but came up a few points short in the Mazda championship.  This year Leonetti’s red hot start in Mazda continues as he qualified second with a 1:21.913, won a huge race which paid 146 points and now is the overall point leader.  Second-placed Petr Dolezal (Central-Eastern Europe), who has won two consecutive Mazda titles, finds himself in unfamiliar territory but is only two points behind Leonetti overall.  Dolezal qualified number one this week with 1:21.710 and raced twice for a 114 point average at Charlotte.  Joe Pisciotta Jr (Florida) won seven of eight races and a 174 point win at Charlotte moved up two spots to third in the overall standings.

Time Trials saw Stephane Morien (Canada) average 1:23.657 in his Mazda to collect 100 points while John Newton (UK&I) ran 1:24.082 for second place and Juan Rodriguez (Florida) rounded-out the top three with a 1:24.210 average around Charlotte.

Notables: Yoeri Flossie (Benelux) posted a 130 point average for third best this week while Christopher J Smith (UK&I) won four of five starts for a 120 points average, good for fourth best at CMS.

Even experienced drivers make mistakes! Andrey Loginov loses traction heading into the Speedway section.

After three weeks of racing the Multi-Class Top-3 in points look like this.

Pontiac Solstice
Ilham Halabi  (Div. 1) – 494
Duljon Boldrin (Div. 2) – 402
Chris Hughson (Div. 1) – 383

Mazda MX5 Roadster
Lorenzo Leonetti (Div. 1) – 399
Petr Dolezal (Div. 1) – 397
Joe Pisciotta Jr (Div. 1) – 345

Check inRacing News next week when the iRNC heads to Summit Point for the second time this season for its “Short Configuration” road course.

Nico Hulkenberg – 14th/13th: “It was a good day, and we were able to work through the programme without any issues. The balance of the car improved during FP2, and we know the track will improve and get faster throughout the weekend. We collected a lot of data, and there is still room for improvement.”

Esteban Gutierrez – 16th/15th: “It was a positive day in many aspects. In the first practice session, I focused on finding confidence in the car. It was quite tricky, because it’s a very narrow and bumpy track, and in the beginning, it’s very difficult to read the car. But this is something we were able to improve in the second session. It was important to have the reference between the two cars. It’s evident the gap to the front is quite big, and we need to find more speed in qualifying. Nevertheless I definitely enjoyed today, and we will keep pushing for the limit.”

Tom McCullough, Head of Track Engineering: “It was a trouble-free day, and we were maximising track time. For Esteban it was the first day in a Formula One car on this track, and he got up to speed pretty quickly. The updated parts are working as intended, which is positive. It’s clear traffic management is going to be key in Monaco, as usual. We were able to improve the car between FP1 and FP2, but there is still some more to find.”

Monaco pacesetter Nico Rosberg remains wary that Mercedes’ Formula 1 rivals are yet to show their strongest hands in Monte Carlo.

Mercedes had been a popular tip for victory heading into the weekend, and Rosberg proved such views were not without foundation as he went fastest in both practice sessions in the Principality.

Rosberg feels Mercedes can be confident it is at least in the hunt for what would be a fourth straight pole position, but admitted there is still uncertainty over the opposition’s pace.

“Generally I’m pleased with today, it was a good day going in the right direction,” Rosberg said.

“I felt comfortable in the car, and we know we’re more or less in the hunt for a good result in qualifying – somewhere towards the front – but we have to wait and see.

“We really don’t know what other teams are doing, what they are running.

“I don’t know if [Mercedes' pace] is going to be enough or not.

“The other thing is long-run pace: it’s better, but there are still some issues there, it still could be a problem. So there are a couple of question marks.”

Asked whether Mercedes could carry its practice two form into qualifying and secure another front-row lockout, Rosberg added: “It’s way too early to think about that.”

Hamilton, who progressed from fifth to second fastest over the opening two sessions, admits he still needs to find time from himself and through the car.

The Briton, outqualified by Rosberg in Bahrain and Spain, trailed his team-mate by three tenths of a second in the second session.

“It looks pretty good, I just have to improve my one-lap pace – there’s a bit from me and a bit from the car,” Hamilton explained.

“We had a bit of graining and understeer, but the long runs seemed to go pretty well, so we’ll see.”

Nico Rosberg – 1st/1st: A very productive day for us. We completed a lot of laps and I feel comfortable in the car. It seems that we are quick again on one lap but we have been working hard again to make improvements to our race pace. It will be interesting to see where we are compared to the others over the weekend as it’s not really representative today. It feels great to be back here driving around the streets of my home city here again and I’m very much looking forward to the weekend.

Lewis Hamilton – 5th/2nd: It’s been a positive start for us today and I’m pleased with what we have achieved here in Monaco. We did some good long run work this afternoon and the supersoft tyres seem to be performing well. I need to improve my one lap pace however, partly with the balance of the car and partly from me. The car is almost there and the pace looks good so we’ll look at the data tonight and work on those areas which can still be improved before the weekend.

Ross Brawn: Today was a pretty good day for us and it’s always nice to come through the first day of the Monaco weekend cleanly. The true test will come on Sunday but I’m pleased with the technical work that we covered in the two practice sessions today. Both Nico and Lewis, along with our engineers, did a very good job working together through the programme. A pleasing start to the weekend and now we have to make the right decisions for Saturday and Sunday

Toto Wolff: It was a good solid first day for us: lots of laps, no incidents and good lap times. Nico and Lewis both looked quick and comfortable and we seemed able to keep the tyres in good condition on our long runs this afternoon. Our rivals will be very strong on both Saturday and Sunday, so we will get our heads down and keep working to build on this good start.

Red Bull is not currently able to match the single-lap pace Mercedes showed in Monaco Grand Prix free practice, reckons Mark Webber.

The Australian’s fifth place in the afternoon was the champion team’s best result of practice day in Monte Carlo.

Mercedes’ Nico Rosberg was quickest in both sessions, leading team-mate Lewis Hamilton in a one-two in practice two.

Asked if he felt Rosberg’s pace was within Red Bull’s reach, Webber was sceptical.

“If we could, we would have done it today,” said Webber.

“1m14.7s is not hanging around but let’s see how things go.

“We were not really in the window here last year up until my last lap in Q3, so we need to rediscover that if I can and be towards the front – you need to be there here.”

Sebastian Vettel, who had KERS issues and was unable to get a lap-time boost when he switched from softs to super-softs, agreed that one-lap speed was Red Bull’s worry.

“Unfortunately we had a big change and we lost quite a lot of time in the afternoon,” he said.

“Not completely ideal but that is Friday – or in this case, Thursday.

“We would like to be a little bit more competitive in low-fuel configuration so we need to try and find some lap time there.

“My run on super-soft was very poor, so we need to understand why. I wasn’t able to improve which you should be quite easily.

“After that I did a long run on super-soft and it seemed quite OK.”

Webber added that he was not concerned to be lacking time at this stage as he never expected to be on the pace immediately in Monaco.

“You will never come to Monte Carlo and have the perfect day or perfect set-up,” he said.

Lambertson edges Castro, Doyle and Vanek for the fixed setup SoF win at LVMS.

This week’s fixed strength of field race of 3200 saw 22 drivers challenge for the win over a 50 lap continuous battle as no yellow flags were thrown during the race. In the end there were four drivers competing for the win ahead of a hungry pack as 17 drivers finished on the lead lap. The fastest lap of the race was set by Chris Welker (Mid-South) with a lap time of 25.157 seconds. As the laps wound down it was unclear who would win or even if the race would finish under green as Lap 48 saw Conor Cross (Ohio) and Eric Hansard (Florida) make contact, sending Cross into the wall hard, bending his chassis.

As the leaders came to the final corner it became clear the outcome hinged on a drag race between Andre Castro (NY) on the low line and Matt Lambertson (PA) alone on the high side which, in the final corner, does not automatically offer an advantage.   Still, Lamberston successfully and surprisingly passed Castro on the outside of Turn Four to take the win despite leading just two laps of the race. Castro crossed the line .08 seconds later after leading 36 of 50 laps, with Tim Doyle (Atlantic) .03 seconds behind Castro.  Erik Vanek (Ohio) was next to the flag, as .134s covered the top four finishers with Jim Rasmussen (NJ) heading the chasing pack in fifth, all of .544s behind Lambertson’s winning Dallara.

The fixed points standings see Vanek in the points lead with (554) ahead of Doyle (535) and Jonathan Goke (Mid-South; 520). As LVMS showed, fourth placed (518) Castro has the potential to fight for the championship as does Week Three points winner Lambertson (507).

The iRacing.com IndyCar Oval Open setup series points see Randy Crossno (California) in the lead (403) following Goke’s Week 3 absence.  Second position is the Fixed Points leader Vanek (362) with Robert Blouin (Canada; 346) in third . Paul Jenkins (Illinois) has 343 points in fourth position. Fifth position (336) is Georg Naujoks (DE-AT-CH).

Tune in next week for coverage of the fourth week of iRacing.com IndyCar Oval action as the drivers blast into Indianapolis where cars will hit speeds upwards of 230 miles per hour trying to claim victory at one of America’s most prestigious tracks in a hope to drink the milk in victory lane.

Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton proved that Mercedes’ Formula 1 rivals are right to fear its Monaco pace as they went first and second in Thursday afternoon practice in Monte Carlo.

Following his consecutive poles in Bahrain and Spain, and fastest time in practice one in Monaco, Rosberg continued his strong run by topping the second session on a 1m14.759s.

He set that lap less than half an hour into the session and it remained unbeaten for the rest of the afternoon, as teams instead focused on just how far they could push both the soft and super-soft tyre compounds.

Although there were plenty of radio comments about tyre overheating and wear, as well as the usual Monaco traffic complaints, the Pirelli situation did not seem desperate for any teams.

The gap between the two Mercedes at the front was 0.318 seconds.

Ferrari was Mercedes’ next rival once again, with Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa third and fourth.

Mark Webber put Red Bull into the top five this time, but his team-mate Sebastian Vettel’s day remained quiet as he took ninth.

As is often the case on a practice day, Kimi Raikkonen and Lotus set ominously rapid long-run times that hinted at far more threatening race form that the headline pace suggested.

The Finn and his team-mate Romain Grosjean were sixth and seventh, despite the latter having the first crash of the F1 weekend when he slid into the Sainte Devote barriers on only his 11th lap.

Jenson Button was eighth for McLaren, followed by Vettel and the two Force Indias.

Pos Driver                Team                   Time       Gap     Laps

 1. Nico Rosberg          Mercedes               1m14.759s            45

 2. Lewis Hamilton        Mercedes               1m15.077s  + 0.318s  50

 3. Fernando Alonso       Ferrari                1m15.196s  + 0.437s  37

 4. Felipe Massa          Ferrari                1m15.278s  + 0.519s  38

 5. Mark Webber           Red Bull-Renault       1m15.404s  + 0.645s  41

 6. Kimi Raikkonen        Lotus-Renault          1m15.511s  + 0.752s  38

 7. Romain Grosjean       Lotus-Renault          1m15.718s  + 0.959s  10

 8. Jenson Button         McLaren-Mercedes       1m15.959s  + 1.200s  39

 9. Sebastian Vettel      Red Bull-Renault       1m16.014s  + 1.255s  32

10. Paul di Resta         Force India-Mercedes   1m16.046s  + 1.287s  42

11. Adrian Sutil          Force India-Mercedes   1m16.349s  + 1.590s  43

12. Sergio Perez          McLaren-Mercedes       1m16.434s  + 1.675s  40

13. Nico Hulkenberg       Sauber-Ferrari         1m16.823s  + 2.064s  42

14. Pastor Maldonado      Williams-Renault       1m16.857s  + 2.098s  40

15. Esteban Gutierrez     Sauber-Ferrari         1m16.935s  + 2.176s  44

16. Daniel Ricciardo      Toro Rosso-Ferrari     1m17.145s  + 2.386s  37

17. Jean-Eric Vergne      Toro Rosso-Ferrari     1m17.184s  + 2.425s  42

18. Valtteri Bottas       Williams-Renault       1m17.264s  + 2.505s  46

19. Jules Bianchi         Marussia-Cosworth      1m17.892s  + 3.133s  40

20. Charles Pic           Caterham-Renault       1m18.212s  + 3.453s  43

21. Max Chilton           Marussia-Cosworth      1m18.784s  + 4.025s  40

22. Giedo van der Garde   Caterham-Renault       1m19.031s  + 4.272s  30

Pirelli is facing resistance from Force India as it tries to get unanimous approval from Formula 1 teams for its tyre modifications.

Following a dramatic week of behind-the-scenes negotiations with teams and the FIA about what it can change on its tyres, Pirelli is hoping to tweak the rears for the next race in Canada to eradicate the delamination issues that have blighted recent grands prix.

But although the FIA is happy that there are safety grounds for Pirelli to make the alterations it wants to – which will essentially be replacing the steel belt in the rear tyre with the kevlar used last year – not all teams are eager for such a tweak.

It is understood that Lotus, Ferrari and Force India have expressed reservations about such a move, and the latter team is especially unhappy about the situation.

Force India is well aware that even minor tweaks could have an impact on the competitive form it has shown so far this year.

AUTOSPORT understands that it is specifically questioning whether there are actually enough safety grounds for there to be a need for changes at all, especially as none of the rear failures have resulted in the tyre deflating.

Sources with good knowledge of the situation claim that one of the arguments being put forward is that Pirelli motorsport director Paul Hembery admitted in a recent press release that safety was not being compromised by the tyres.

“It’s important to point out that these delaminations, which occur when the tread comes off, do not compromise the safety of the tyres,” he was quoted as saying.

SAFETY TWEAK COULD STILL AFFECT TYRE PERFORMANCE

Hembery was seen in discussions with Force India’s deputy team principal Bob Fernley in the outfit’s motorhome on Thursday lunchtime to try and make progress on the matter.

Although Force India would be unlikely to have a veto on even minor changes being made to the tyres – because the FIA is satisfied that there are safety grounds – Pirelli is eager to get support from all teams on the matter.

Hembery told AUTOSPORT: “We are trying to seek a solution that is supported by everyone, and is fair to all the teams.”

A change of the belt material at the rear would likely result in the rear operating temperatures of the tyre being reduced by up to 10-degrees centigrade.

That move could help teams like Mercedes which has struggled with overheating rear tyres so far this season.

It would not be enough, however, to benefit a team like Red Bull that has found its performance limited by the front tyres this season.

Pirelli currently only has plans to tweak the rear tyres, because of the delamination issue, and will stick with the current fronts unless there is unanimous support from the teams for an alteration to be made in the longer term.

Sam Bird set the fastest time in the half-hour practice session for the fourth race weekend of the GP2 Series season on the streets of Monaco.

Using the super-soft tyre, Bird lapped the Principality in 1m21.512s, leading a Russian Time one-two ahead of team-mate Tom Dillmann, who was 0.057s slower.

Bird rates the Monaco track as his favourite on the calendar, and won here in Formula Renault 3.5 last season.

Mitch Evans was best of the rest for Arden in third, almost a quarter of a second off Bird’s pace. Jolyon Palmer was fourth fastest for Carlin, but was unable to break into the 1m21s bracket.

Barcelona poleman Marcus Ericsson was fifth fastest for DAMS, ahead of Johnny Cecotto Jr, Fabio Leimer, Felipe Nasr, Rio Haryanto and James Calado, who suffered an overshoot at Ste Devote near the end of the session.

The drivers were very well behaved in the session, with only a couple of moments to report. Local hero Stephane Richelmi spun at Rascasse, and then stalled as he attempted to recover, ending the session 19th.

Nasr had the nearest of misses at the Swimming Pool, while championship protagonists Leimer and Stefano Coletti suffered overshoots; Leimer at Ste Devote, Coletti at Nouvelle Chicane. Kevin Giovesi also slid to a halt at Rascasse.

Championship leader Coletti, who hails from Monaco, ended the session down in 17th. Barcelona feature race winner Robin Frijns was even slower, down in 20th and 2.1s off the pace.

McLaren junior racer Stoffel Vandoorne has been given a five-place grid penalty for this weekend’s Formula Renault 3.5 race in Monaco for crashing under yellow flags in free practice.

Vandoorne topped the session - his first around the streets of the Principality – but he was involved in an accident that brought the red flags out with two minutes to go.

The Belgian spun at Sainte Devote, colliding with the stopped car of Zoel Amberg who had narrowly avoided hitting the already-crashed car of Mathias Laine.

Marshals were already on the track by this point, but fortunately they were not hit by any of the cars.

Vandoorne was investigated by the stewards post-session, and given a five place grid penalty.

However, AUTOSPORT understands the former championship leader believes there were no yellow flags on the approach to the corner.

Fortec team boss Richard Dutton told AUTOSPORT: “We would like to see some video. We don’t have any and it seems the officials don’t either.”

The decision provoked an angry reaction from many drivers and teams in the paddock, who believe that the penalty should have been more severe if there were yellow flags waving that Vandoorne ignored.

Title rival Antonio Felix da Costa said: “If there were no yellow flags then his penalty should be nothing.

“If there were yellow flags then the penalty should be bigger. I get on with Stoffel, but I would feel this way if it happened to anyone on the grid.

“For the amount of stuff we get [from the officials] in the drivers’ briefing about this – which they are right to do – a five place penalty is a joke.”

AUTOSPORT SAYS
News editor Glenn Freeman

If the fuss surrounding Stoffel Vandoorne’s free practice crash seems a little bit over the top, it is worth considering just how hard a time the drivers are given on yellow flag safety in the drivers’ briefing for the Monaco weekend.

Several drivers have confirmed that a large portion of the Monaco briefing every year focuses on an incident from 2005, when Pastor Maldonado hit a marshal who was on the track recovering another car.

The drivers are shown footage of this and the incident is dissected in great detail with the use of slow motion replays as well. Maldonado was given a hefty ban for his incident, and it is drummed into the current crop of drivers just how important the safety of marshals is on this track.

So you can understand that a fair few are a bit miffed that after all that, the penalty for crashing as marshals are recovering another car is only five places on the grid for Sunday’s race.

Unfortunately the TV footage of the incident – seen again by AUTOSPORT – is inconclusive. There were clearly flags waving at the scene of the crash, but were there any on the approach to Sainte Devote?

It is understood that there is a CCTV camera that picks up on what could be a yellow flag in the background, but this does not offer 100 per cent proof.

In the end the officials made their decision based on the evidence of the marshals, who say they were waving the yellow flags.

Honda’s bid to hit the ground running when it returns to Formula 1 with McLaren in 2015 will be helped by the Woking-based outfit having a season with Mercedes’ new V6 turbo, reckons rival Renault.

It was confirmed last week that Honda will be making an F1 comeback in 2015 after signing a multi-year deal with McLaren.

The timing of that move means that McLaren will get to evaluate the new Mercedes turbo next year, opening up the possibility that lessons taken on board will be passed on to Honda.

Although McLaren insists that there is no chance of any of Mercedes’ intellectual property being transferred to Honda, rival Renault thinks the transition season still gives enough opportunity for Honda to benefit.

Renault’s head of track operation Remi Taffin said: “Even if I am sure that McLaren will be very good at separating things and working with Mercedes, as soon as everything stops you don’t forget anything you learned.

“Plus we are competitors, so you will try and get the most out of it [the situation]. The answer is Honda will benefit from McLaren running Mercedes engines in 2014.”

HONDA RETURNS TO F1

Honda confirms 2015 F1 return

F1′s race to secure engine deals hots up

McLaren: Honda a bedrock for success

McLaren expects ’15 Honda exclusivity

Taffin suggests that one likely consequence of McLaren preparing for the Honda switch is that there will likely be a strict lockdown of sensitive information from Mercedes.

“The only thing that you will and should protect is the intellectual property, so they [McLaren] will not have access to drawings, or to any bit of software.

“You come to a point where it is difficult for a transition like this one. Should I give them this software – or should I keep the box as black as I can? This is the difficult thing.

“Simply speaking, you could say: ‘this year we will give you the power unit, here you go guys, and you deal with it’. They [Honda] will learn from it, but the question is how much you will let them learn from it.”

Taffin does not believe, however, that Honda will benefit over engine rivals by sitting out the 2014 season to see how the new regulations play out.

“There will be an advantage because they [Honda] will see what is going on. They will be able to look at what we have been doing, and also look at the technology we are using, or look at the employees we have been working with.

“But on the other side we have the advantage of having customers who run F1 cars.

“We will have them to help us to integrate the new power unit and it is not only about what technology you are using, it is how you are going to integrate the new technology into the chassis and how you make the car fast. I would imagine on this side we will have an advantage.

“You are on a better position if you are racing in 2014, but it is not like the one coming in 2015 is having a bad year.”

Nico Rosberg narrowly led a close first free practice session for the Monaco Grand Prix on Thursday morning.

The Mercedes driver, who is hunting for a third straight pole position after topping qualifying in Bahrain and Spain, set a 1m16.195s.

That was enough to edge out Fernando Alonso’s Ferrari by just 0.087 seconds.

The majority of the quick times came during a busy spell in the middle of the session. There was scant track action in the opening half-hour, but once the frontrunners came out, leading positions shuffled frequently for a brief period before the field settled into longer runs.

Felipe Massa had swapped the top spot with Rosberg a few times before the Mercedes and Alonso’s sister Ferrari pushed the Brazilian down to third.

He then dropped another spot to fourth when Romain Grosjean put his Lotus ahead with one of the few late improvements.

Grosjean had earlier lost a little track time after a minor brush with the barrier meant his car needed attention in the pits.

Lewis Hamilton completed the top five in the second Mercedes.

Monaco specialist Pastor Maldonado is banking on this weekend giving Williams some much needed encouragement. Sixth in practice one was a good start.

The Red Bulls of Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel were back in seventh and 10th, split by McLaren duo Jenson Button and Sergio Perez.

The only significant incident of the session came when Adrian Sutil spun and gave his Force India a knock at Sainte Devote in the closing minutes.

Hamilton had earlier skated down the escape road at the same point.

Pos Driver                Team                   Time      Gap      Laps

 1. Nico Rosberg          Mercedes               1m16.195s           30

 2. Fernando Alonso       Ferrari                1m16.282s + 0.087s  26

 3. Romain Grosjean       Lotus-Renault          1m16.380s + 0.185s  20

 4. Felipe Massa          Ferrari                1m16.394s + 0.199s  22

 5. Lewis Hamilton        Mercedes               1m16.469s + 0.274s  27

 6. Pastor Maldonado      Williams-Renault       1m16.993s + 0.798s  26

 7. Mark Webber           Red Bull-Renault       1m17.020s + 0.825s  26

 8. Jenson Button         McLaren-Mercedes       1m17.129s + 0.934s  28

 9. Sergio Perez          McLaren-Mercedes       1m17.378s + 1.183s  24

10. Sebastian Vettel      Red Bull-Renault       1m17.380s + 1.185s  22

11. Kimi Raikkonen        Lotus-Renault          1m17.509s + 1.314s  25

12. Paul di Resta         Force India-Mercedes   1m17.548s + 1.353s  26

13. Adrian Sutil          Force India-Mercedes   1m17.625s + 1.430s  20

14. Nico Hulkenberg       Sauber-Ferrari         1m18.193s + 1.998s  25

15. Jean-Eric Vergne      Toro Rosso-Ferrari     1m18.454s + 2.259s  24

16. Esteban Gutierrez     Sauber-Ferrari         1m18.754s + 2.559s  27

17. Valtteri Bottas       Williams-Renault       1m18.830s + 2.635s  27

18. Daniel Ricciardo      Toro Rosso-Ferrari     1m19.067s + 2.872s  24

19. Giedo van der Garde   Caterham-Renault       1m19.203s + 3.008s  20

20. Charles Pic           Caterham-Renault       1m19.438s + 3.243s  27

21. Jules Bianchi         Marussia-Cosworth      1m19.773s + 3.578s  19

22. Max Chilton           Marussia-Cosworth      1m20.225s + 4.030s  20

V8 Supercars organisers remain optimistic about Ford’s long-term future in the series despite the firm ending road car production in Australia.

Ford announced on Thursday that it will move production overseas from 2016 and stop making the Falcon model that it currently races in V8s.

The firm had been a V8 mainstay, and for many years it and Holden produced the entire grid.

A V8 series statement said Ford was expected to stay on despite the road car news.

“Ford has an enormously proud and successful racing heritage globally as well as here in Australia with the Falcon, the Mustang, Sierra and Cortina,” it read.

“We expect that to continue for at least the next three years and beyond.

“The very purpose of Car of the Future is to adapt to the market conditions. It is incredibly successful with Nissan and Mercedes-AMG on the grid, and more to come. It is the future of the sport.”

Rod Nash, co-owner of primary Ford squad Ford Performance Racing, hopes his team will continue to represent the manufacturer long-term.

“While we are of course sorry to hear that Ford will be ending local production from October 2016, this by no means signals an end to Ford in Australia, nor to the close relationship we have with the company,” Nash said.

“Ford is a robust global company and one that has taken a tough decision to ensure the future viability of its business here in Australia. It will continue to be a significant force in the Australian automotive landscape.

“We are proud to fly the Ford flag and look forward to doing so for years to come.”

There are currently six Fords in the 28-car V8 field, with Dick Johnson Racing running two cars alongside the FPR quartet.

Its representation was reduced this year with DJR reducing its line-up and the former Stone Brothers team – now Erebus – beginning its Mercedes project.

McLaren junior driver Stoffel Vandoorne topped Formula Renault 3.5 free practice in Monaco on Thursday.

The Fortec driver – racing in Monaco for the first time – was one of several rookies to shine in the session before putting in a decisive lap with seven minutes remaining to go fastest.

Vandoorne was then involved in a scary incident that brought the session to a premature end with around two minutes remaining.

Mathias Laine started the chain of events when he crashed at Sainte Devote. As marshals got to his car, Zoel Amberg narrowly avoided running into the back of Laine, coming to a stop just behind the Finn.

As the rest of the cars slowly made their way past the incident, Vandoorne then spun on his own at the same corner, and his car clattered into Amberg’s.

Fortunately, none of the cars involved collected the marshals, who were trying to attach Laine’s car to a crane to get it removed.

Pre-season title favourite Antonio Felix da Costa spent several spells at the top of the times, and he ended the session second ahead of rookie Norman Nato.

Next up was another newcomer, as Red Bull junior and GP3 racer Carlos Sainz Jr was a surprise frontrunner throughout the session on his way to fourth place.

The Spaniard, making a one-off appearance in FR3.5 for Zeta Corse to learn the Monaco track, even went quickest for a while in the early stages.

Behind him, the top six was completed by former champion Mikhail Aleshin and current points leader Kevin Magnussen.

IndyCar has confirmed details of the race two qualifying procedure for the three double-header events on the 2013 schedule.

Qualifying for the second races in Detroit, Toronto and Houston will be split across two groups, with each getting 12 minutes and a minimum of five minutes of track time.

The arrangement required a change to Rule 8.3.9.1, which had originally specified a 30-minute session involving the entire field.

Groups will be determined by practice times from the previous day, with Group 1 being reserved for odd-numbered positions and Group 2 being allocated to even-numbered positions. Times from the two groups will be combined to determine the starting order.

“Splitting qualifications for the second race will give a premium to the amount of track time available to each competitor,” said IndyCar race director Beaux Barfield.

“It will improve the ability for competitors to get a clean lap and post a true lap time.”

The grid for the first race will follow the standard three-round format used at other road and street course events.

DRIVERS – Jenson BUTTON (McLaren), Adrian SUTIL (Force India), Jules BIANCHI (Marussia), Nico HULKENBERG (Sauber), Romain GROSJEAN (Lotus), Lewis HAMILTON (Mercedes)

PRESS CONFERENCE

A question to you all. Round six of a 19-race season coming up, the same points are up for grabs as any other grand prix. It’s just another race… or is it? Is Monaco the greatest race of them all?

Jenson BUTTON: Good afternoon. Is it the greatest of them all? I don’t know really. I think they’re all pretty special in their own right. Some of them have more history than others and Monaco is definitely one of them. A lot of us also live here, so it’s a very special race. But I think if you’ve had the opportunity to fight for a win and actually cross the finish line first, it’s a very special race, yeah. You feel as though you celebrate that win, obviously with your team, but also with everyone watching here, because it’s such a confined space. It’s a very special place to win. But there are so many other races that mean a lot to us and certain races that mean more to us as individuals than Formula One as a whole.

What about you Adrian – greatest race, or will it be when you finally get a good points-scoring finish?

Adrian SUTIL: It could be, yes, definitely. But I feel this as a normal race. Like every other race really. You try to the best possible. In a way it’s a bit different because you know from the past and from experience that there are more possibilities out there. It’s a very tricky circuit, unforgiving and easy to make mistakes, [see a] safety car. The risk is high here and that opens up some situations for you… it can work well for you or the other way. Having that in mind gives a nice race, a nice weekend. Starting last or starting at the front doesn’t mean you will win the race. It’s all up [for grabs]. You need to be on the point and just stay focused for the whole race, until the race is finished.

What about you Jules? You’ve raced here before, not in F1 of course but it’s like your home race. How up for it are you?

Jules BIANCHI: Yeah, of course I’m really excited to be in the car tomorrow. I think this race is special for me because I was born in Nice, which is not really far from here. It’s like a home race, as you said. I can’t wait to be in the car even if I know it is a tricky track. It’s not easy to be quick here. But anyway I had some good records in the junior categories so let’s see what we will do.

Nico?

Nico HULKENBERG: Like Adrian said, the approach is the same to every other grand prix. It’s definitely special. I’ve never won here. I’ve been on the podium in GP2 and that was certainly. Even in F1 to achieve a podium here or even a win would be special and I think it stands out a bit more than a normal grand prix let’s say.

Romain, another man for whom Monaco Grand is also a home race.

Romain GROSJEAN: Yeah sort of. Monaco is not France but basically it’s not far. A special race, with a special podium as well at the finish, when you get meet the Prince, which is nice. There’s 25 points, as every other grand, but I think Monaco is a special one to me.

Lewis, how special is this place?

Lewis HAMILTON: Good afternoon everyone. Yeah, Monaco is spectacular. As Jenson said, a lot of us live here. I don’t feel like it’s like any other race. Winning here is unique and special, in its own way. When you do win here, when you finally get that, you have the most incredible feeling. Every time you come here that’s what you’re chasing for every year.

Jenson, before we came to Monaco, news that Honda are returning to Formula One as engine suppliers to McLaren in 2015. What was your reaction to that news?

JBu: I thought it was good news. I think for us as a team it’s good news for the future but I also think for the sport as a whole it’s fantastic news. Having another engine manufacturer in the sport is good. We have three very strong… four, sorry, four very strong engine manufacturers in the sport and I think with the new regulations it’s going to bring in other manufacturers and Honda being the first to announce that is great and hopefully there will be more.

Was it good news for you personally? You had quite a long association with Honda before?

JBu: I’ve got a lot of connections to Japan and Honda is one of them. I spent a lot of time working with them in the old days… it seems like a long time ago now, but a lot of very positive moments and I look forward to that in the future. But it’s a long way down the road still so we’ve got to focus on what we’re doing now at the moment, with Mercedes and in 2015 it will change.

This season, Adrian Sutil, started really well for you in Australia. Since then things haven’t gone quite your way. Do you think you’re suffering a huge amount of bad luck at the moment?

AS: There’s no good luck and no bad luck for me. It’s just certain things happen and then you have to get behind it and see where the problem is. Many problems we had… small, but they turned out to be absolutely important for the race. A little wheel nut in Barcelona, which was a problem and it caused a pit stop which was almost a minute long and the race was over – no question. It was very impressive how quick the car was again. The race speed was very good, and the pace. So, it’s good to know the car is fast; the package is fast. It’s like the little piece of the puzzle we need to put together. The most important thing: the problem we had, we solved it. It was a different problem to Malaysia. It’s just a question of time that I will have my results. I will not give up. I will fight hard for it and try to also be clever and make a good result soon.

Q: Jules, a lot of people are talking about you and paying you quite a few compliments given your start to Formula One. How would you assess the opening five races of your Formula One career?

JBi: Well obviously it’s been a really positive start for me – and for the team as well. Trying to do the best result that we can. We know it’s difficult, we have to be realistic – we won’t score… well, it will be difficult to score points for us. So, just trying to do our best, trying to push as hard as possible and yeah, the first five races has been really nice. Some improvement on the car, some improvement with myself, so I’m really confident for the next fourteen races.

Q: It’s been a good battle between Caterham and Marussia. The last couple of races Caterham seem to have had the upper hand. Will that change this weekend?

JBi: I’ll try my best to do it, yeah for sure. Caterham are a bit in front but we saw in Barcelona that we were a bit quicker in the race pace – so that’s positive for this race. Anyway it’s a bit special so we will see tomorrow – but anyway we will have a good fight with them.

Q: Nico – if one word were to sum up your season so far ‘frustrating’ might be right up there. Has it been a huge frustration for you since you moved to Sauber?

NH: Well, frustrating is maybe not the right word but it hasn’t been super-satisfying for sure. We’re not delivering the results we want to and the results we thought we could deliver. We’re just a bit too slow, it’s as simple as that and we’re not competitive enough. At the moment the whole team is pushing and everybody in the factory at Hinwil is trying his best to make the car quicker and solve the issues. And that’s where all the focus is, to be honest now. We have to improve this car and then I’m sure we can fight for points more often.

Q: Is it fair to say you would have expected more than the five points from the first five races with the team?

NH: Yes, that’s fair to say.

Q: Romain, qualifying: always important here in Monaco. This year your average grid position 8.4. If you qualify there that puts you in the thick of things again. How much of your focus and preparation this weekend is on qualifying – not just the race?

RG: I think here more than everywhere else qualifying is important. It’s not a secret that overtaking in Monaco in hard – unless there is a little bit more degradation than we had last year and you can try a different strategy. But yeah, we will work on it. We started quite slowly this season and we recovered pretty well from Bahrain onwards and that’s what is important to know. And yes, we can definitely improve that which is not as good as we would like.

Q: Can you be more aggressive personally, do you feel, going into the qualifying on Saturday?

RG: I don’t think it’s a question of ‘aggressivity’. It’s just the relation between the car and yourself. It’s very tight this year. The tyres have changed a little bit, you need to understand them fully and from there I’ll push.

Q: Lewis, talking of tyres, both you and your team-mate Nico Rosberg have suffered similar problems – but not at the same time in the last couple of races. Is it a puzzle? Whereas in Bahrain you had a better race than Nico, in Barcelona he had a better race than you. Is the problem easily solved?

LH: It’s definitely not easily solved. It’s something we’re working on internally. Just working as hard as we can to assess and understand where we went wrong: tyre pressures, temperatures and all of those kind of things. I don’t think it’s going to be as bad – hopefully – moving forward. It’s definitely something we’re trying to improve on. So hopefully we won’t have as many bad races as we did the last one.

Q: Given what’s happened in the last couple of races, some people say this is your best chance of a race victory. Do you share that view?

LH: Not particularly. Not particularly. I think it’s a good… we have a good opportunity this weekend but you never know what the others are capable of. Last year they were quite competitive, Mercedes was quite competitive here. Obviously our car is better this year so we should still be competitive this year. But the Ferraris and the Lotuses and the Red Bulls are massively competitive as well. So, we just have to wait and see.

QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

Q: (Kate Walker – GP Week) Question for Lewis, obviously you had a very difficult weekend in Barcelona and we assume you will have gone back to the factory, studied all manner of data and drawn some conclusions. While you can’t necessarily tell us about those conclusions are you expecting an improved performance for the weekend? Do you think you’ve got a good level from which to build after, you know, what was quite a challenging weekend?

LH: I definitely do. I think a huge amount of work has gone into understanding where we went wrong. As I said, the guys have really kickstarted a lot of different discussions. Obviously it’s a real science trying to understand these tyres. Everyone’s trying to understand them but I really feel this weekend will be a better weekend for us compared to the last. And moving on from here I think we’ll just continue to learn and improve.

Q: (Alex Popov – RTR) Question to all the drivers except Lewis – because Lewis just tweeted a photo of new helmet especially for Monaco. Do you do something for this race specially? And for Lewis, another question, if you can comment about Paddy Lowe who will follow you from Woking to Brackley.

Helmets first, Jenson?

JBu: No more special than normal, no.

Romain?

RG: That means you don’t follow me on Twitter! I tweeted it yesterday. Blue, white and red.

Adrian?

AS: The only change I have on the helmet is a Uruguayan flag. Since many years I wanted to do it and now it’s on – because my father is from Uruguay but I will keep it on for the whole season and from now on for the rest of my career. It’s not special – not specially Monaco.

Jules?

JBi: Yeah, I have a special helmet for Monaco – but you will see it tomorrow.

Nico?

NH: No. No special – just the basic helmet.

Q: () What does Paddy Lowe bring to Mercedes?

LH: We’ll see, time will tell but obviously Paddy’s… I’ve had great experience of Paddy over the last five or six years. He’s obviously a great person and massively intelligent and will be a great asset for the team, so I’m really looking forward to working with him. We look forward to it.

Q: (Livio Orrichio – O Estado de Sao Paulo) Lewis, in 2002 David Coulthard started in pole position, he didn’t have the fastest car in race conditions and he won the race. Michael Schumacher was behind him with a car which was much faster but he didn’t get to overtake him. Do you think this is the reality this year, that you can repeat what Coulthard did?

LH: I think that if you were just watching last year, it’s very difficult to overtake. I think Mark won it last year and just controlled it from the front, even though he had a very competitive car, so yeah, overtaking is very very difficult here as I proved a couple of years ago. So if you’re able to get out in front, it’s more than likely if you’re able to manage your tyres that you can stay there. Definitely.

Q: On the subject of overtaking here, is it all about patience, Adrian? Do you just have to hope the moment comes but you’ve really got wait for it?

AS: Yes, well, overtaking is difficult but I don’t see qualifying being an important thing for the race. Just looking at all the last races, there have been several drivers starting from the back or in midfield and they were on the podium. I think Lotus have been a good example. You need to have the right strategy. Mercedes? Yeah, they’ve struggled. They were one and two in Barcelona and had big problems in the race. It just shows that the tyres are so difficult in the race and it’s a very different thing – qualifying and race – but I’m here to race and the points are given in the race. Qualifying… it doesn’t really matter where you are, you have to stay focused really.

Q: (Jens Walthers – German Radio) Lewis, how would you describe your relationship with your teammate, Nico Rosberg? Are you teammates, colleagues, friends, neighbours?

LH: Well, we’re neighbours, next door neighbours but we’re teammates too. We work hard together to try and push this team forward. Obviously we have a lot of history together from being teammates and friends since 1997, so we’ve known each other for a long long time so naturally we have a friendship but of course ultimately we are fierce competitors.

Q: (Ian Parkes – Press Association) Jenson, when the Honda deal was announced, it naturally raised the question as to whether you might still be around in 2015, but Jonathan Neale (McLaren managing director) said you have a job for life. Can I ask how that makes you feel first of all, and secondly, when he says for life, how many more years do you think you might have left as a racing driver?

JBu: Did he say a job for life or a job as a racing driver for life?

Q: (Ian Parkes – Press Association) Job for life.

JBu: Ah, OK. I don’t know what that means then. I don’t know. I don’t want to think about the future too much at the moment. I think that yeah, you’ve got to live for the moment and I don’t think that trying to agree a lengthy deal for the future is something that is interesting at the moment for me. I’m 13 years in the sport, I want to have freedom and that feeling that if it doesn’t feel right any more: stop. But I definitely don’t feel that yet. It feels that it is going to be a long way down the road. For me, that freedom is important in the future.

Q: (Paulo Ianieri – La Gazzetta dello Sport) Lewis, do you think that if the Pirellis do change slightly that it will help Mercedes in the rest of the championship?

LH: I definitely hope so, it can’t be any worse for us, that’s for sure. I think that if they do make some changes they will help everyone really and will definitely change the way the races will go, compared to how they have gone.

Q: Nico, Romain, do you welcome a few tweaks to the tyres, a few changes?

NH: I’m not sure what happens now. Obviously Pirelli provides the tyres and I understand that there are still some discussions there with the FIA and Pirelli, so I’m not sure what’s going to happen but we will go forward, we will work with what Pirelli will provide. Tyres are changing, some people deal better with them than others and I think we have to adapt.

RG: Well, it’s not able to change in the middle of the championship, even though it’s maybe only a small change, we don’t know but I think we were pretty competitive with the original ones and the team has been working well with that so we will see, we will do our best.

Q: (Gary Meenaghan – The National, Abu Dhabi) Question to all of you: could you just talk about your first memory of Monaco when you were growing up as a fan and what your impressions were and how they compare to how it was when you actually got here as a racer?

JBi: Obviously, when I was young, I was watching Formula One and that was my life because I was racing in go-karts and coming here to Monaco with my family to watch a race was something special, it was like a dream to maybe one day drive on this track. I didn’t expect that. Now I’m here, it’s a special moment for me and I can’t wait to be on the track and enjoy this moment with my car; for sure it will be a great moment.

AS: My first time here in Monaco was in Formula Three in 2006, I believe, when I raced with Lewis in the European championship. It was a great race weekend, yes, I really enjoyed it, but no contact before that. It was maybe a bit too expensive for my family at that time, we couldn’t afford it.

NH: Is that specially about Monaco or in general? First time I came here was in karting, there used to be a kart race here. I don’t know if that’s still on and then after that, GP2 in 2009, yeah, it was great, good fun, a very unique place, very challenging, one of the few circuits that we still have in the calendar which doesn’t allow any mistakes. I always really enjoy coming here for the track, for the atmosphere, for everything really so I’m happy to be here.

RG: One of my first memories was 1996 when Olivier Panis won, the last French driver to win, a long time ago. When I came here, I found it more challenging than what you think it is on the TV. A long time ago.

JBu: Well, my first memory was in 2000, my first year in F1 and it was all going well until Loews (now Grand Hotel) and I T-boned Pedro de la Rosa and caused a red flag. In those days we had spare cars – in those days, Christ, a long time ago – so we basically had a running race back to the paddock for who got the spare car. That was quite fun.

LH: I think for me, apart from watching Ayrton crash into the wall when he was leading by a long way, I think my first real experience here was the same as Adrian’s when we were both here in Formula Three. It was a great weekend. I remember I was planning to stay in Menton and then I called Martin (Whitmarsh) and he fixed me up with a hotel room in the Beach Plaza and it was just a ball all weekend, it was one of the best weekends of my life up to that point.

Q: (Ian Parkes – Press Association) Lewis, you’ve been asked about your relationship with Nico a few questions ago; what about your relationship with Adrian these days? Has that changed at all now since Adrian’s returned to Formula One? Obviously it ended quite acrimoniously not so long ago. Adrian, from your perspective, how are things between you and Lewis now?

LH: Things are different, definitely. We’ve spoken a couple of times and we’ve planned to get together at some stage and just have a chat basically. We’ve been great friends for a long long time and we’ve had some of the best times together along the way, especially, as you said, in Formula Three times. You can only really count your good friends on one hand maybe, so as people say, good friends are hard to come by, so I want to make sure we get things right.

AS: Well, as he said, yes, different and I’m still waiting for a coming together. I can’t say anything more.

Q: (Aleksander Tabakovski – Vecer Macedonia) Question for all drivers and especially for the German drivers, because this weekend will be the final of the football Champions’ league, between two German teams, Borussia and Bayern. I just want to hear your feelings about it and from each driver, who is their favourite soccer team?

JBu: I’m not a big football fan.

Q: Which B do you fancy most?

JBu: Whoever scores more goals, I’ll go for.

LH: I always like Bayern Munich. When I was playing football – I used to – when I was playing on the computer games I used to play Bayern Munich quite often, so I will say them.

RG: I’ll follow Jenson’s club.

JBi: I kind of like Bayern so I hope they will win.

NH: It’s kind of cool to have two German clubs in the final but strange as well at the same time. They’ve played twice in the German league and now they meet again in the European final which is a bit weird. I’m pretty neutral, I’m not a Munich or Dortmund fan but I’ve become more of a football follower recently and I just watch it, enjoy it, but I don’t really care who wins.

AS: OK, so I’m not a football fan but I’m from Munich, that’s the answer: Bayern Munich for me, yes. I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

Q: More importantly, do either of you think you could be the back page headlines in the German newspapers on Monday morning or will it all be about the football?

NH: Probably be a lot about the football.

AS: I hope I make some good headlines after this weekend.

Michaels celebrated his new partnership with Twister with a fourth place at Sebring.

Round Two of the 2013 iRacing.com World Championship Grand Prix Series at Interlagos produced a noteworthy “first” when Stephen Michaels disconnected from the event.  While it’s not unusual for a driver running a lap down in P30 to withdraw from a race, the fact it was the first time Michaels failed to finish in the top ten of an iWCGPS event is remarkable.

True, it’s not as if the 18 year old high schooler from Ballston Lake, NY has scores of iWCGPS races under this belt.  On the other hand, from the moment he qualified for his first iWCGPS race at Mid-Ohio in the latter part of 2012, he has been a fixture at the sharp end of the field.  How sharp?  Michaels qualified and finished ninth in his iWCGPS debut.  He did even better the next time ‘round at Road Atlanta, planting his Williams-Toyota FW31 on the grid beside pole-winner Riku Alatalo (and ahead of the likes of Greger Huttu and Hugo Luis) before a mature drive to fourth in the race itself.  And thanks to top tens in all the remaining races, he finished P20 in the 2012 iWCGPS standings – in just six races mind you – to punch his ticket to the 2013 series.

Humble to a fault, Michaels concedes he exceeded expectations, especially his own.

“When I joined iWCGPS, I thought that I would be not good enough for the field in the series . . .”

“When I joined iWCGPS, I thought that I would be not good enough for the field in the series,” he says. “I had a new PC at the time which I thought helped me a whole ton with no low FPS or anything like that. The first two races I was at least happy that I finished and had my goal set to try making it into top 25 and helping my teammate Fulvio Barozzini on MMM!!! (Mortadella Motor Mission) team.”

For the remainder of 2012 and early 2013, MMM was the little team that could, with Michaels and Barozzini coordinating private test sessions 4,000 miles and five time zones apart.  Not only did the partnership produce a slew of top tens for Michaels, it saw Barozzini finish P10 in the 2012 standings and helped propel the Italian and the American to 11th and 14th in the 2013 standings, respectively.

That said, Michaels has arguably been somewhat less competitive so far this season.  Apart from a sixth place in the opener at Spa and last week’s fourth place run at Sebring, he hasn’t cracked the top ten.

“It was my confidence I had but most of all the right feel on my setups for Sebring and Spa,” he explains. “I felt as though I was able to push more with the setups for Spa and Sebring. At tracks like Phillip Island, Road America and Interlagos I was just too nervous to try concentrating on getting up into the field for top 10 start and finishes.”

Huttu and, to slightly lesser degree, Luis are threatening to runaway with the championship but, conversely, the battle for the “lesser” positions is as fierce as ever.  Indeed, Michaels sees the 2013 competition as being stiffer than last year.

“I would say that 2013 iWCGPS is bit more tough then 2012 iWCGPS just from how close everyone is to each other in qualifying laps and race stint times,” he says.

Michaels’ fortunes may be on the upswing as he recently parted company with MMM in favor of Twister Racing, where he hopes to have the resources to compete with the more established names in the iWCGPS on a regular basis.  The move seemed to produce immediate results, as that P4 at Sebring came under the Twister banner.

“My plan for Twister-Racing is to try finding a good program of telemetry,” he says.  “I feel as though it’s the one thing I am missing to being right where teams like Team Redline and My3id Gaming are in the front rows. I do plan to try making little bit of improvement with being consistent with the car.

“What I do now for Twister is work by myself in test sessions and not in public sessions. I figure out what feels right for me under my setup and what fuel strategy I can pull for the race. After figuring out my setups I practice at least from one hour to four hours. I still try to minimize my time I take for practicing.”

Michaels (left) challenged Jake Stergio for a spot on Road Atlanta podium in just his second iWCGPS start.

Of course, it’s a two way street as Michaels also leant a helping hand to new teammates Tommy Nilsson and Muhammed S Patel in the iRacing.com Grand Prix Series at Sebring last week.  The fact that Nilsson (four) and Patel (two) combined for half a dozen wins suggests the partnership is already bearing fruit.

Michaels is no stranger to the iGPS, having scored nine wins in the series and finishing third overall in the 2012 Season 2 points race.  And lest you think Michaels is a Williams-Toyota FW31 specialist, be aware he has plenty of wins in other categories to his credit, particularly the IndyCar Road and Prototype/GT Challenge.

“I used to enjoy cars like the HPD, Ford GT, McLaren MP4-12C, Corvette C6R, Riley Daytona Prototype, Mustang FR500S and Dallara IndyCar, he says. “I lost the interest only because I was most attracted to the F1 car.”

That’s hardly a surprise, given that Formula One – real and virtual — has long been a driving force in Michaels’ attraction to racing.

“I have followed the rich history of Formula 1 ever since there were drivers like Jim Clark and Jackie Stewart.”

“I’ve liked F1 cars for a long time and have followed the rich history of Formula 1 ever since there were drivers like Jim Clark and Jackie Stewart racing, and I still follow Formula 1 today” says Michaels.  “Road racing in cars like the F1 has been what I really loved a whole lot.

“What attracted me to sim-racing was real racing. When I was young I watched many races from NASCAR to Formula 1 and other racing series out there back in the days. Video games like Gran Turismo series, RFactor, GTR2, GT-Legends, NASCAR 2003, Arca 08 attracted me to sim-racing as well.”

Although Michaels hopes iRacing can serve as a gateway to a “real” racing, he’s not pinning all his hopes on the sim.  In addition to his conventional high school studies, he is learning the ins and outs of automotive mechanics at the Capital Region BOCES

“My goal is to get into real world racing and try building a career,” he says.  “I am learning auto mechanics so I know how I can fix my race car but (also), since I like cars in general, to get a job with fixing cars. I do not have any real world racing experience even though it would be an amazing experience to drive in a race car. I plan on trying to make a career and make my way up to a series like Grand Am or maybe Formula 1.”

And when he’s not sim-racing, studying or working on cars, Michaels can be found playing on his PS3, fishing, hiking, at the beach, enjoying Chuck Norris jokes, working-out — especially on ATVs and ATCs – watching Top Gear, reading car magazines or listening to Iron Maiden and Iced Earth.

Michaels sees a good telemetry program as key to consistency.

And, in his spare moments, thinking about how to come to grips with Watkins Glen, the next stop on the iWCGPS schedule.

“This is my home track, but I have never been really good with Watkins Glen” he admits.  “It’s been my worst track but I do hope to try finding something to at least be in the top 15 of the grid. At Watkins Glen I will be only happy that I finish with some points instead of being crashed out from my own mistake.”

Relatively modest goals to be sure, but in keeping with Michaels’ outlook for the remainder of the 2013 season.

“I plan to try doing the best I can and finish all my races in the #20 Twister-Racing car with sponsors Obutto and Thrustmaster,” he says.  “My expectations are to try making up for my bad races with top ten to top five finishes in the next races, from Watkins Glen to the end of the season.”

Given his record to date, it would come as no surprise were Stephen Michaels to exceed expectations — his own most of all – beginning at Watkins Glen.

Catch all the iWCGPS action at Watkins Glen this Saturday at 10 am (14:00 GMT) on iRacing Live.

Mark Webber thinks Formula 1 needs a deep think about whether or not its quest to deliver entertainment has gone too far.

Webber has been one of the most outspoken drivers about the impact that tyres are currently having on the sport, and reckons the whole sport needs to take stock of what is happening right now.

In the wake of fans being unhappy about there being too many pit stops, overtaking being devalued and not enough real wheel-to-wheel battles, Webber suggested that F1 needed to bring back some more proper racing.

“You ask any F1 driver, yes it’s frustrating to sit behind a car for a full grand prix distance,” he said. “I’ve been there, a lot of guys have been there, and that’s not much fun.

“But also my race in Shanghai 2011: I’m arriving on guys like Fernando [Alonso] and Lewis [Hamilton], I’m creaming through them at about 2.5s per lap because I’d saved tyres from qualifying. That’s not right either.

“Lewis Hamilton getting lapped [at the Spanish Grand Prix], having been with Alonso until lap five or six, that’s not right for me. So it’s gone a long way out the other way.

“Barcelona is a tough circuit but it’s a racing track, these are Formula 1 cars. The writing was on the wall in winter testing.

“We have to drop down a little bit to more of the racing side of things.

“Fernando passing Kimi for the lead of the Spanish Grand Prix wasn’t much of an event; Sebastian and Fernando racing each other in Shanghai wasn’t either.

“We have to find a better balance for the fans and the drivers, because at the moment I think we’re too far the other way.”

JUNIOR RANKS ALSO A CONCERN

Webber suggested that junior categories also needed to think about what their aims are, because tyre management has become so important that pure speed is no longer shining through.

“Young drivers now are not getting the chance to show what they are capable of doing, which is the absolute basics,” he said.

“We need to find young drivers pushing the car and themselves to the absolute limits, consistently having a strong baseline. That’s important.

The threat to F1′s stars of the future

“Alex Ferguson wants to see a consistent young footballer at 16 or 17.

“To sort the wood from the trees in the junior categories right now is very, very difficult, so that needs to be addressed as well.”

The field heads for green . . .

Without running a qualifying lap, my #6 inRacing News-sponsored Chevy Monte Carlo would start in eighth position.  At the race start, I kept good pace with the leaders, diced with a few drivers and managed to move up a couple of spots out of Turn Two. Going into Lap Two, Turn One, I made a dive to force it three wide and managed to capitalize by overtaking Jarrett Lawrence (#5).

iRN’s intrepid reporter forces it three wide into Turn One.

However, sixth position was short lived as Chris Higgs in his green no. 8 started breathing down my neck. Higgs would later tangle with Lawrence, but that did not leave me much time to think as the four cars ahead started breaking away. Ty of course had already checked-out, leaving a train of cars in his wake.  Eventually, Higgs was able to inch his way to me until a dive bomb caused some door-to-door contact on the highline, pushing me into the marbles and forcing me to let him have the position.

Higgs and Kingsbury get to rubbin’ in Turn Three and Four.

I would then enjoy a battle of four to five laps with the #5 of Lawrence before finally being able to break away and trying to chase down the #8 ahead of me. Jarrett’s Late Model was very quick in the center of the turns but would easily be beaten by me off the corners due to what can only be over used tires.

However, my joy was short lived as soon the #4 of Stephen Morsillo would sneak by just a few laps later as I ran wide into the high groove of the track.

The two green machines would then go onto work their way through traffic while I continued turning laps until I ever so slightly started to encroach on Joshua Kotten’s #9 Off The Track Chevy Monte Carlo. As the laps ran down, I was able to get within a second of Kotten and looked to have a very good chance of overtaking him for what was seventh position.  By Lap 41 however, everything had changed. Both myself and Kotten found ourselves driving into Tune One in a cloud of smoke. What waited at the other side were three cars in the grass.

There were some surprises in store in the final laps.

With just three laps left I found myself in fifth place with fourth in sight, and somehow still on the lead lap. However, the crew chief soon had bad news for me. It turns out that due to Ty’s line being the low line, and me usually resorting to the high line I had actually managed to burn too much fuel. My fears soon subsided when the crew chief told me we had “two and a half laps of fuel left” with just two laps remaining. However, he had miscalculated and I ran out of fuel on the back stretch of the final lap, unable to challenge Kotten. Luckily, however, I managed to stay on the lead lap, defending against the reigning champion, in my first ever Late Model appearance and take fifth place.

I encourage you to join me on the Late Model circuit, which this week is visiting Lanier National Speedway. I have run a race around Lanier and the track is an absolute joy to run in these cars. I may be late to the Late Models, but I’m glad I made the decision to drive a few races.

Sebastian Vettel insists that Red Bull is not alone in being unhappy about Pirelli’s tyres, and thinks it unfair his team are being singled-out as whiners.

Rivals have criticised Red Bull’s outspoken views on the impact of more aggressive tyres this year, even though it is leading the constructors’ championship and Vettel is on top of the drivers’ standings.

The team’s stance was further questioned after the Spanish Grand Prix when owner Dietrich Mateschitz suggested F1 was no longer ‘racing’ because Vettel stopped four times – even though he adopted a similar tactic to win the race in 2011.

Vettel is aware of the views against his team, but reckons that unhappiness about Pirelli’s products expands well beyond his outfit.

Speaking to the media ahead of the Monaco Grand Prix, Vettel said: “It is because [between] quoting Red Bull or quoting Marussia, you guys prefer to quote Red Bull. So it looks like we are complaining.

“But I think generally, I hear the drivers’ voices in the meetings we have together. Even if you pinpoint Lotus and say they have the best car for these tyres and these conditions, still their drivers complain.

“They have the same problem as us, just to a lesser extent. That doesn’t mean no-one else is complaining.”

Vettel reckons that the 2013 tyres are having a huge impact on the way drivers are going racing this year, likening the situation to skiers being forced to suddenly adopt wooden skis.

“These days the skis allow the skier to go really, really quick around the corners,” he said.

“You need to be brave enough to dare to go that quick, you need to be strong enough, but then imagine from one year to another you have wooden skis.

“The guy who probably wasn’t that good in the first place is now doing better than he should – although I’m not saying the people in front [in F1] now shouldn’t be in front.

“What I mean is that the sport has changed a lot, the racing has changed a lot, and when it really comes to looking after the tyres and struggling with the tyres then it is not racing in the respect that we knew.

“If you compare some overtaking in the past to now, waving people past to save tyres and do your own race as fast as you can, that’s not the idea of racing.”

Vettel does think it essential, though, that Pirelli improves the safety of its tyres.

“I think we have seen a couple of occasions this year where – and I don’t want to talk bad about people – but they have to do a better job on safety grounds,” he said.

“We saw the tyre delaminating and blowing up. Fortunately nothing happened, but it’s not because drivers drove over debris, it’s because the tyre is simply not good enough, and that can’t be safe.

“We don’t want a big off. Imagine here, down the straight into the chicane you have a tyre coming off. I think it’s something that none of us want to see.”

Fernando Alonso reckons Red Bull’s criticism of the Pirelli Formula 1 tyres is simply the result of it not being able to handle defeat well.

Red Bull has been outspoken about Pirelli this season, saying the high degradation 2013 tyres prevent it from fully exploiting the speed of its RB9.

But ahead of the Monaco Grand Prix, Alonso said that Red Bull should question its attitude, as he queried whether the reigning champion does indeed have the fastest car.

When asked to respond to recent complaints about the F1 format, which included Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz saying F1 was ‘nothing to do with racing anymore’, Alonso said: “It’s more a question for them, they made those comments.

“Barcelona was a good race, not so good for some of our competitors. Some of these competitors claim they have a super car but the last three pole positions were for another car when the tyres are new.

“When you win too easily for some years, it’s difficult to lose some races.”

TALK IS STILL ALL ABOUT TYRES

The issue of tyres remains the main talking point in F1 at the moment, especially as teams still await news from Pirelli about exactly what changes are being made to the structures for the Canadian Grand Prix.

AUTOSPORT understands that in the wake of the FIA insisting that modifications are only made on safety grounds, the only changes will be the belt structure of the rear tyres to prevent the delaminations that have hit a number of drivers in recent races.

Even that minor change could have an impact on tyre temperatures though. That scenario could help outfits like Mercedes and Red Bull that have struggled so far.

Kimi Raikkonen, whose Lotus is one of the best on the tyres, was open-minded over the differences, and suggested that the performance of teams would not change that much.

“The fairest way would be to keep the same [tyres], but there is a lot of pressure to do something,” he explained. “They did some changes [before] and they didn’t really affect us.

“I don’t think it is going to make a lot of difference whatever [changes] they make, but I might be wrong.

“I am sure we are not going to start complaining if we are going to have some issues. If they make stronger rear tyres then we could go faster, and it could help us. I don’t really see that it suddenly makes one car faster than the others.”

HAMILTON: TYRES ARE EVERYTHING

Lewis Hamilton hopes the Pirelli modifications will mitigate degradation.

When told that Mark Webber said it was wrong for a slump like Hamilton’s second-to-12th plunge in Spain to be possible, Hamilton replied: “What I like about Mark is that he says a lot of things that are true and a lot of things that he is very blunt about – he says it regardless.

“For other people it is not that easy to do, and I will not put it the way he put it.

“Whether or not we have gone too far, only time will tell. I definitely don’t think you should be able to be that far up and get lapped from second on the grid, but that is the name of the game at the moment.”

Robert Kubica has admitted he is pleased with the rally-leading speed he has shown early in his new career.

The Pole led his third European Rally Championship round in succession in last week’s Tour of Corsica, but he failed to turn that promise into a win when a fuel pump problem struck his Citroen DS3 RRC towards the end of the opening day.

“I’ve been pleased with my pace, I’ve won stages and I’ve been able to fight at the top on all three rallies I have done,” said Kubica.

“To come to these events for the first time and drive at the same pace as the championship contenders gives me a positive to take away from this.

“Now we’re going to focus on the WRC, which is my priority, but of course we will do Rally Poland and maybe one more.”

Kubica is testing his Citroen on rough gravel this week, in preparation for the Acropolis Rally at the end of next week.

“I will have my test and then I will go to Greece on the Monday so there is not a lot of time,” he added.

“I know it’s a very specific event and you have to take care of the car.

“It will be an interesting experience because it’s my first time on rough gravel and I know I cannot take big risks because I really want to finish.”

While Kubica’s WRC2 programme now takes priority this season, he could add the ERC’s Sanremo Rally to his schedule.

Fernando Alonso has tipped Mercedes to be a strong contender for victory in Sunday’s Monaco Grand Prix.

The German team has yet to finish higher than third in Formula 1 this year, despite claiming three pole positions, after struggling with tyre management.

But the Ferrari driver believes that if Mercedes can take pole position in Monte Carlo, it will be favourite for victory.

“Mercedes will be strong,” said Alonso.

“They have been on pole position for the last three grands prix so we expect them to be very strong again.

“They were on pole position last year with Michael [Schumacher] before he got the [grid] penalty.

“We know how difficult it is to overtake, if they are on pole position they are favourites.”

Alonso added that he is not too concerned if Mercedes does finish ahead, provided he is able to outscore his world championship rivals.

The Spaniard is 17 points behind world championship leader Sebastian Vettel, with Lotus driver Kimi Raikkonen 13 clear of him.

“We are not going to forget our main target, which is the world championship,” said Alonso.

“At the moment, Vettel and Raikkonen are ahead of us.

“If Mercedes has to win one race, this is the one and we just need to concentrate on finishing in front of the others.”

ALONSO EYES MONACO TRIPLE

Despite focusing on the world championship fight, Alonso is determined to end his Monaco GP victory drought.

He won the race in 2006 for Renault, adding a second victory for McLaren a year later (pictured), but has not managed to do better than second since.

Ferrari has also struggled in recent years, taking the last of its eight Monaco F1 wins 12 years ago.

Asked if those winless runs gave him extra motivation, Alonso replied: “Yes, definitely. Obviously we want to win the championship as we said many times but Monaco is a special race.

“Monaco is the most important race in the championship.

“I can be the first man to win for three different teams so it is good motivation for me.”

Lewis Hamilton says he will put everything into getting pole position for the Monaco Grand Prix to give Mercedes a chance of fending off its faster rivals for victory.

The Briton has no qualms about wanting to ‘create a train’ in the Monte Carlo race, as he admits Mercedes could well repeat its recent Formula 1 form of being fastest in qualifying but struggling to keep its tyres intact in race conditions.

“If you can get on the front row here you have a much better chance of staying in front than perhaps we have done in the last races,” said Hamilton.

“It is going to be tough still because people last year pushed to a one-stop strategy, and people might want to do the same thing this time which means doing 40 laps which will be very tough on our car.”

In Spain, Mercedes tried its utmost to make progress with its long-run tyre wear, but ultimately struggled even more than before on the Sunday, with Hamilton tumbling from second on the grid to 12th at the finish.

That experience has convinced Hamilton than his Monaco strategy should be to focus entirely on qualifying.

“In the last race we tried to sort the car more for the race and it didn’t help at all,” he said.

“For me it goes to show that there isn’t a race set-up versus a single lap set-up, so I am going to work hard this weekend to get that qualifying lap set-up because position is everything here.

“If we can get on the front row that will put us in good stead for the race.

“In 2007 I was second and I could not get past Fernando [Alonso], last year no one could get past [Mark] Webber – it was just a train. You can create a train here.”

Hamilton suspects that Mercedes’ tyre strife will not be so dramatic in Monaco in any case.

“You don’t have the high-speed corners which put a huge amount of effort into the tyres,” he said.

“So we can definitely go longer on the tyres.”

He admitted that the Spanish Grand Prix experience had taken him aback.

“Coming into the season I was prepared for bad results and I think the season had gone so well and we were on a bit of a high,” said Hamilton.

“To see us go back that far was a huge surprise, and definitely put you on back foot a little bit.

“But lots of work is going into understanding why we went that way and to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

“I am re-energised, re-focused for another challenge.”