MONACO (MC) MAY 21-24-2015 – Grand Prix de Monaco 2015. Alex Fontana #40 Pons Racing. Action. © 2015 Diederik van der Laan / Dutch Photo Agency / LAT Photographic
The first day for the Pons team in Monaco has been successfully completed in the only free practice completed this morning. Philo Paz Patric Armand and the rookie Alex Fontana, who temporarily took over from Roberto Merhi involved in F1 with team Manor, have successfully done a team work aimed to complete the most laps and become familiar with the Monaco street circuit that they had never known before. It is not so important what was the final result of today’s ranking, which saw Armand and Fontana down the charts, but the key thing was the quality of information collected for themselves and for their engineers in anticipation of tomorrow’s qualifying to be held at 9am.
Philo Paz Patric Armand: Free Practice P18 – 1’27″601
“The end result is certainly not interesting, but honestly I have always kept a large margin not risking to damage the car. My purpose was to perfectly understand the track, staying away from trouble. Among other things, I did not use the new tyres as many rivals did. I am actually calm and confident that tomorrow during qualifying we can race with absolute consistency. ”
Alex Fontana: Free Practice P19 – 1’27″982
“It was my first time on a street circuit and do it in the Principality of Monaco was particularly exciting. I had already driven in the Dallara-Zytek category last October, but several months have passed in which I did the race and test with the GP3 and readjusting to Renault 3.5 was not immediately easy. I took my time, I tried not to hinder anyone and this is also the reason why I struggled to get a good pace. Then I increased the speed improving the results until I cooled the tires to tackle the final run with a strong pace. Unfortunately … having the radio that did not work, I did not understand that the session was over and when I started to improve speed I saw the checkered flag. Too bad, but I’m confident for qualifying, I think we will considerably improve performance”.