REVIEW BY BEN STEVENS
Thursday
Say what you will about the Circuit de
Monaco’s dearth of wheel-to-wheel racing,
the frantically serpentine on-boards it
provides can make even Thursday practice
exciting.
With only centimetres the difference
between triumph and disaster, there really
isn’t another circuit that provides the same
top-to-bottom exhilaration – hell, even
Marcus Ericsson is worth watching.
As Sebastian Vettel noted in his
Wednesday interview, Monaco is a circuit
that demands the utmost confidence from a
driver, in both themselves and the car.
Perhaps more than in previous years,
it seems the whole field had that almost
immediately, the new regs providing if not
5-second faster lap times (yet), at least the
grip for drivers to absolutely chuck their
cars into the corners.
That said, it wouldn’t be Monaco if
there weren’t a few hairy moments, and
today was no different. Ocon, Ericsson,
Button, Raikkonen, Perez and Vettel
all had their dalliances with the Armco,
although it was the one man who won’t
earn the fans’ forgiveness who got the worst
of the circuit’s unforgiving nature, with
Lance Stroll ending his session early after
going into the wall at Casino Square. Let’s
hope he’s got a shrink on standby.