Stoffel Vandoorne was a pleasing seventh fastest at the end of the opening day of practice at the Monza circuit in Italy, something that came as a bit of a surprise, not just to the fans but to the drivers themselves.
However, as the Italian track is the fastest one on the calendar and the Honda engine is the slowest car engine wise, it didn't come as a surprise to see the two orange cars slipstreaming with each other down the powerful straights to increase their lap times.
While this means that their times from Friday are not really representative, if they can continue to stick together during qualifying there is a strong change of a decent grid position for Vandoorne with Alonso already confirmed to have a 35 place grid drop due to engine changes.
“It's been a bit of a surprising Friday for us as a team. To be inside the top 10 with both cars has been a very positive start to the weekend, especially on a track like Monza where we know the engine deficit plays a very big role,” Stoffel explained. “I think it's been a very positive Friday but, as we can see, the lap-times are very close behind us, so we need to keep working – to keep fighting for every tenth, hundredth, thousandth we can find – because it's easy to lose a lot of places here.”
“We would be extremely happy if we can carry forward today's performance into tomorrow, but I think we might go backwards a little bit as the others probably have a bit extra in hand with engine modes. But we just need to benefit from others' mistakes, really focus on our own performance, and hopefully we can carry this momentum through to tomorrow.”
“The weather forecast doesn't really worry me. So far today has been dry – I haven't yet seen the weather forecast for the rest of the weekend – but we'll see what happens and you never know how it will affect our running.”
