Daniil Kvyat admitted to being satisfied by his performance throughout Qualifying for the Monaco Grand Prix on Saturday, with the Russian advancing to the top ten shootout for a third consecutive race weekend.
The Scuderia Toro Rosso driver set the eighth fastest time during the final segment of Qualifying but will gain one place to start seventh thanks to the grid penalty for blocking handed out to Red Bull Racing’s Pierre Gasly.
Kvyat praised his mechanics and engineers for the work put in between the free practice sessions on Thursday and the Qualifying session on Saturday that enabled him to improve his confidence behind the wheel of the STR14 and deliver a good performance.
The Russian has only converted one of the other two top ten starts into a points finish – he finished ninth in the Spanish Grand Prix two weeks ago but retired from the Azerbaijan Grand Prix after an incident and then contact with Daniel Ricciardo – but he wants to bring home points this weekend at the Circuit de Monaco.
“I’m very satisfied with Qualifying today,” said Kvyat. “I think it was great teamwork between my engineers and myself.
“We did a good job analysing where I felt uncomfortable on Thursday and they gave me exactly what I asked for, as soon as I get the setup I want I know I can deliver a good performance.
“That’s three Q3s in a row now, so I’m happy with how I’m performing – I hope we can do a good job tomorrow and score some points to capitalise on a good Qualifying.”