Monte Carlo – An exhilarating qualifying for the Ferrari with Kimi Raikkonen, with a mere 25 thousandths of a second behind Jenson Button, therefore gaining the second position on the grid for tomorrow’s Grand Prix. A good qualifying also by Felipe Massa, making up ground after the problems at the start of Q1, finishing fifth on the starting grid. It’s the first time this year that the Prancing Horse manages to place the two F60s amongst the first five cars on the grid. In addition to that Kimi drove the fastest lap time of all the free practice sessions and the qualifying this weekend in Q2 with a time of 1'14"5.
The Finn is extremely motivated for tomorrow’s race, although he just missed the pole position by the blink of the eye. It would have been a striking result for the F60, remembering last weekend’s qualifying. But Kimi will be Kimi: he promised to have a fulminant start to recapture position one in the field. Same satisfaction for Felipe, although with some regret for the fast lap he missed in Q3, which might have made the weekend at Monaco even more exciting for Ferrari. For the Team everything is still completely open: the single-seaters of the Prancing Horse demonstrated, that they are competitive, running exceptionally well on the soft compound and they were the only cars on the top of the grid, which can count on the KERS at the start.
We’ll see, but the signs are very encouraging for the Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro, confirming the positive signs we could see already at Barcelona. It confirms the excellent work by the technicians and mechanics at Maranello, despite this year’s difficulties and no possibility to test the car between one GP and the next. Here at Monte Carlo the F60 shows up with some improvements on important details, such as the front wing. What’s positively surprising is the fact that no other car was able to improve their cars as Ferrari did from the GPs in Asia to the ones in Europe.
Tomorrow the 56th Monaco Grand Prix will be started with temperatures of around 25° C and track temperatures of 35C. The start of the race is at 2pm local time.