Interview
Minì hails promising pace but says he and MP are not ‘fully perfect’ in Monte Carlo
Gabriele Minì finished fastest overall in Thursday’s Monte Carlo Free Practice but still feels that he and MP Motorsport can improve going into Qualifying.
The Italian driver was a constant at, or near, the top of the leaderboard throughout the session, before leaving it until his final lap to beat Kush Maini to P1 by just 0.020s.
Speaking in the paddock afterwards, and despite having completed a 1:21.809 to lead the way, Minì felt there was still more pace to find going into the weekend.
“It was quite a good session,” he said. “I felt that pretty much every push lap I was either P1 or P2, so it's very promising. I still feel we are not fully perfect, so of course we have some work to do for quali, as I'm sure everybody else does as well.
Reflecting further on Free Practice, the 21-year-old felt it was a positive for him and the team to get an insight into what the car felt like on the Supersoft tyres late on, especially as they could compare it to the softs they ran earlier in the session.
“It's very good, more than good it's useful,” he said. “You now know a bit what to expect tomorrow. Of course it's going to be really different with two FPs from F1 and another quali from F3, so it's going to be very different in terms of track temperature and grip level.
“So we have to take all these things in consideration when looking at the data, when doing tomorrow's setup and also for me to prepare, but still it's a very big help.
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“We know there is a big step from the Softs to Supersofts. It’s not too huge, but I mean together with the track improvement and the change of balance, it's quite big. So it's very good to see that we adapted well, but of course we still have to do a good quali tomorrow.”
The top four names on the leaderboard – Minì, Maini, Alexander Dunne, and Dino Beganovic – were all drivers who have prior Formula 2 experience in Monte Carlo.
However, the MP driver does not think that existing knowledge of how the Monaco circuit can change session-to-session will have a huge impact on how Qualifying will go on Friday.
“To be honest it's not too relevant in a way because it's always different,” he explained. “Maybe F1 changes how the compounds feels or F3 does the same, and even for us it's a different feel.
“So you have an idea, but it's in a way not completely pointless, but it's not as useful as someone would imagine.
“We can have a rough idea, but then in terms of operating through the lap, we're talking about very basic stuff, it can be a really big factor and it changes quite a lot. So we will have to see, we will try to build on from the first push and then see how it is.”
On the plan for Qualifying, Minì highlighted how quickly things can change to explain why having a build up approach can be a problem.
“In a way you can't go too easy in the first laps, because you never know what can happen in Monaco,” he continued. “It's always very easy for anyone to tap a wall and create a Red Flag, a yellow flag and everything like that.
“So you still need to be up there almost straight away. Yes, build because you don't want to be at the very edge on the first push, because there is no point doing that anyway with tyres that are not going to be in the window.
“But at the same time you can't be sleeping, so it's going to be about who finds the best compromise.”