F1 News
Full focus on qualifying in Monaco? Mercedes say that's not smart
Nowhere is qualifying more important than in Monaco. It often becomes clear on the Saturday who will win the race through the streets of the principality a day later. For teams, there could therefore be the serious consideration of going all out to tune the cars perfectly for qualifying and thus less for the race itself. This is also on Mercedes' mind, according to technical boss James Allison. However, he sees the perfect scenario differently.
"Yes and no, at the same time," he argues, after all. "I think one of the main things you need to do at Monaco is to make sure that you spend as much time on the track as possible in the Free Practice sessions. Things change so dramatically from the opening laps of FP1 to the end of FP3. Generally speaking, the teams that do well there are the ones that do not hang around in the garage but are just out there on the track, remembering what it takes to drive at Monaco, finding the confidence to push nearer to the walls and just tuning the car as the weekend conditions change."
Race pace also important according to Allison
Certainly, qualifying is extremely important says Allison. "While it is the case that qualifying is super key at Monaco, you cannot afford to ignore the race pace on top of that. You cannot afford to because imagine you do a wonderful qualifying session, and you manage to get the car right at the best it could be if it were just focused on a single lap. Come Sunday you will find a trail of cars behind you and at a certain point you will get frightened that they are going to undercut you and get past you into the lead, so you will probably stop sooner than you want to stop because you are frightened about losing the position to all those people behind you."
According to Allison, that would be an ideal scenario for the competition. "They will not stop, they will just run long, they will overcut you because they have been sitting on their tyres gently and they have got loads left in the car and they will just disappear. You must have half an eye on the race pace and half an eye on the qualifying pace and spend as much of the weekend as you can on the track trying to get the most from that very unusual circuit so that you are good in both those conditions," Allison said.
This article was written in collaboration with Olly Darcy