The stewards have penalised Red Bull, AlphaTauri, and Alfa Romeo for speeding in the pit lane during practice for the Monaco Grand Prix.
The pit lane speed limit is set at 60 kph during practice and then boosted to 80 kph for the rest of the weekend, and Yuki Tsunoda was deemed to have exceeded the limit by 16 kph, earning their respective teams a punishment of 1,000 euros.
Bottas’ infraction occurred after his one and only installation lap in FP1, before car troubles forced him to miss the full session in the Principality. Meanwhile, Sergio Perez exceeded the speed limit by 3 kilometres per hour, resulting in a fine of 300 euros for Red Bull.
On Friday, the Mexican clocked 61 laps and finished both sessions ahead of teammate Max Verstappen, splitting the Ferrari duo of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz in FP1 before finishing third in FP2. In the second hour, the Red Bull driver was over four tenths of a second behind Leclerc, and he confesses that the gap caught him off guard.
“Good two sessions,” Perez said after practice. “The long run was a bit difficult with the traffic, but all in all we seem to be lacking a bit compared to the Ferraris, they seem to be very strong today so we will analyse everything and see what we can do.”
“They seem to be pretty strong today… Yeah, we were surprised, we were expecting a bit of a gap but not such a gap so [there is] plenty of work to do and we’ll see, I mean Q3 is what matters.”
Verstappen finished fourth in both sessions, emphasising the Austrian team’s need to cut the gap on the Scuderia. Despite a red light for Daniel Ricciardo in second practise due to a crash, the Dutchman is pleased that he was able to get some excellent long runs in.
“Overall, we’ve been trying a few things round here to see how the car was behaving,” the reigning world champion explained. “I was a little bit happier in FP1 than FP2, and I mean of course if you have a little bit of a better balance, you can attack a bit more and then of course your lap time comes out a bit better.”
“But yeah, clearly compared to Ferrari we have to find a little bit more, now it’s all about just trying to fine tune my balance as well.”
In terms of the new cars, during the opening hour in Monaco, Sir Lewis Hamilton complained of porpoising and Verstappen claims that the nature of the new cars under current technical standards means that the drivers feel the bumps more.
“You can feel the weight of the cars,” he said. “[They are] a bit heavier, a bit slower, a bit more bumpy as well with these cars because they are stiffer, but it’s alright, it’s okay.”
“It’s a bit more difficult with the visibility but still very hectic to drive around here!”
