It was an exciting qualifying and I’m happy to be starting third as I think it was the maximum we could do today. Everyone in the Team works so hard at this race so hopefully they can also be happy with this and my mechanics did a great job. Of course, as a driver and a racer you always want to be on pole but you also have to be realistic. In Q2 it looked pretty good but I knew that they (Mercedes) were coming and that they still had some margin. In Q3 we didn’t quite have the tyre temperature that we wanted on the final run, which cost us a bit of lap time, but I still don’t think we had enough for the front row. Overall, I feel good in the car and we keep pushing hard to improve. It is of course hard to overtake here so it will be very challenging to move forwards in the race, but if we are able to stay close then who knows what can be done with strategy. Whatever happens, I will be pushing as hard as always for the best result.

It was a good qualifying and fifth is pretty good. I would have liked to have jumped Seb who was just a tenth faster in P4, but I wasn’t super satisfied with my lap and I struggled to put all the sectors together. You can see things are getting better but for sure there is still more performance to come. It’s all about continuing to work with the engineers to try and find a balance that helps me extract the maximum from myself. There’s a chance of some rain tomorrow which I wouldn’t mind, especially on this track as it would make things pretty interesting. I think we’re pretty good in the long run, but the main chance for us will be at the start where hopefully we can make up some places.

Third and fifth are decent grid positions for tomorrow and it’s our best qualifying of the season to date. Max was extremely impressive in Q1 and quickest in Q2. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the cleanest Q3 for us with traffic on his preparation lap. But nonetheless, the second row here on the clean side of the grid is a great place to be starting the Monaco Grand Prix. Pierre has had an impressive weekend so far, qualifying a close fifth. This strong performance represents his best ever qualifying result in F1. The forecast also looks a little bit variable for tomorrow so that could spice things up.