Monaco GP: Upbeat qualifying for Williams Racing

Logan Sargeant:
"It’s my first time driving an F1 car in Monaco this weekend and I’ve loved every bit of it so far. Every lap on this track keeps you on your toes. The build-up has been great; tomorrow is going to be a long day but we’ll make the most of it. This afternoon in Qualifying was probably the most relaxed I’ve been this weekend, I’ve been driving well in the Free Practices and I was happy with my qualifying lap; coming from the FP sessions, I didn’t think we would be as close as we were and I felt like I got everything out of it. Alex’s [Q1] lap was pretty impressive, I’ll have to see what he did! We got the car in a good window. There were a few bits that could have been better, but it’s tough to accommodate for all the different types of corners here. Starting 16th isn’t ideal around here but I want to execute a full, clean weekend, so if I can go out tomorrow and have good race pace then that would be a nice way to round out the weekend and then move on to Barcelona which is a track that I love."

Alex Albon:
"It was a good day today; we were on the back foot all weekend but, with this track, we knew it was going to be difficult and the weaknesses in our car were going to be challenging around this circuit. We made a lot of changes from FP3 to qualifying and they worked, so that’s always a positive thing. These changes made the car much more drivable for Qualifying but we did use three sets of tyres in Q1 to get through. I was happy with my lap but I lost too much time in the traffic whilst the tyres warmed up so, despite this, I feel like our car was better than the results today. Let’s hope for some rain tomorrow."

Dave Robson, Head of Vehicle Performance:
"Qualifying in Monaco is always a difficult session, but we coped with the situation reasonably well. Both drivers had solid FP3 sessions and went into Q1 knowing that it would be tight, but aware that a good lap could see them into Q2.

Logan did an excellent job but fell agonisingly short of the cut-off. Alex, meanwhile, had some newly found confidence in the car following some setup work after FP3, and was able to comfortably make Q2. If we had got everything right with Alex and given him a completely clean outlap, then he could’ve been very close to a place in Q3.

The race will be tough tomorrow with overtaking still extremely difficult here. However, with both drivers comfortable with their cars then we will be looking to make progress."

Track: Circuit de Monaco, Monaco