Red Bull didn’t carry the dominant form they showed in Barcelona last weekend into practice at Monaco today, but Sebastian Vettel demonstrated the team are capable of snatching another pole position by finishing the day third fastest.
The German completed 74 laps over the two 90-minute sessions, and speaking afterwards, explained that plenty of track time was necessary here on a Thursday. “We did a lot of laps today,” said Vettel, “which is good as that's important in Monaco. The car feels alright, but if you look at the times it's difficult to judge where we are. One thing that's clear it will be very, very tight over the weekend.
“The top four teams are split by a couple of tenths and fuel loads are not as important here, so it's close. It looks challenging. Qualifying has been good for us at the last races and I hope it continues on Saturday.”
Mark Webber was fourth in the morning session but could only manage in the tenth this afternoon. The Australian, who won the last race in Spain, said afterwards that the RB6 was better suited to tracks like Monaco than last year’s car. “It was a pretty good day today – we went a bit early with the options to beat the weather and we've got a bit of work to do with the balance, but in general it was good.
“We've made progress in the low-speed stuff since last year. We saw indications of it in Singapore and Abu Dhabi and what we learned with the RB5 has rolled into the RB6. It will be tighter here than it was in Spain, it's a special track – we know that. Saturday will be an exciting qualifying session for definite.”
