By Andrew Cutler
May 25 2012

Scuderia Toro Rosso came into the 'unique to Monaco' Thursday Free Practice Sessions looking to acclimate their drivers to this one of a kind track, as well as to get ready for Saturday. Changing weather conditions in FP2 gave them issues on both counts.   

Daniel and Jean-Eric were the first drivers on track in FP1, and managed to log 28 and 25 laps, respectively. Both would post lap times in the 1:18.2 range, which was good enough for the 14th (JEV) & 15th (DR) best marks. They would get nearly the same number of laps in Fp2, but rain would make their tasks more difficult, and their times would get slightly worse: JEV would post a 1:18.502 (17th best) and Daniel a 1:18.808 (18th best).  

Here are their post FP comments:

Jean-Eric Vergne:

This was my first time here in a Formula 1 car and I really enjoyed myself. Because I did not go particularly well round Monaco in the World Series last year, I was a bit apprehensive about today, although still looking forward to a new experience and not knowing what to expect. I think my performance today compared quite well to my team-mate, as Daniel won the last two World Series races he drove at this circuit and he had also had some practice time in the F1 car last year. From that perspective, I am quite happy and I feel the lap time was not important, especially as I had a bit of traffic and I finished my fastest lap in the pit lane. I am relatively pleased with the balance of the car which we can fine tune a bit further, but I still need a bit more time to adapt myself to this circuit, even if I liked driving it when it was wet. I feel prepared for whatever weather conditions we might encounter for the rest of the weekend.”

Daniel Ricciardo:

"Because of the weather in the afternoon, things did not go quite as smoothly as planned and we weren’t able to try everything we had hoped to. So a bit frustrating, especially as we have a day off tomorrow: I’d prefer to be driving, but it’s probably a good thing as we can really think about what we need to do to move forward. There are some areas where we need to improve and I’m sure that if we sort that, our performance will change completely and hopefully we will have a good qualifying on Saturday."

Laurent Mekies, Chief Engineer:

 “Altogether this was a rather frustrating day, as the track conditions were very variable during the afternoon session. Given that Daniel has only driven FP1 in Monaco last year for us and Jean-Eric has never driven a Formula 1 car here, our main objective for the day was to give both drivers as much track time as possible on this unique circuit. That is why they were the first out of the pits this morning, as we wanted them to get into the right rhythm and that part of our plan was successful. They seemed to enjoy the experience. We also tried to do plenty of laps this afternoon despite the changing conditions, but overall, in terms of the usual jobs of working on the car set-up, we did not achieve that much. Apart from that, we had a trouble free day and the drivers did not make any mistakes and, because of the unusual timetable at this event, we have a whole day tomorrow to think about how we can improve the car for the rest of the weekend.”