PART TWO – Alex ALBON (Williams), Max VERSTAPPEN (Red Bull Racing), Gabriel BORTOLETO (Kick Sauber)
Q: Max, why don’t we start with you? General question first of all – Monaco, what makes this event different and special?
Max VERSTAPPEN: I think it’s just how difficult the track is to master in qualifying, to get the most out of it. Also knowing that overtaking is difficult on a Sunday, qualifying is even more important. It’s incredibly narrow, challenging, bumpy. The history, of course, of Monaco in general – this is one of these races that you really want to win. It is very special to be racing here. It’s pretty insane, to be honest. But once you stand on the top step on the podium, it’s something where you’re like, “That was a great weekend.” You’re like, “done!”
Q: Talking of great weekends, you had a great weekend at Imola last time out. You’ve clearly made a lot of progress with the car in recent races. Is it enough for you to win your third Monaco Grand Prix on Sunday?
MV: Well, I mean, if you take the average of Miami and Imola, I don’t think we look that great. So we have to be calm. Imola was a very good weekend for us – I say weekend because Friday was not good. We just have to keep understanding our car a bit better, what we want with the set-up. This is a very different track. If you look at the season so far, we’ve only really been properly competitive on high-speed corners. Monaco is not a high-speed track. I’m a little more reserved for this weekend. Even if you have the best car, to nail it in qualifying around here is very tough. We just have to see what happens tomorrow and work from there. I have no idea where we are in the order. Historically, we’ve not been particularly great on street circuits. Hopefully we can change that a bit, but I don’t know.
Q: Max, can I ask you about the championship now? We’re one third of the way through the season. You’re only 22 points behind the leader, Oscar Piastri. Do you believe you are genuinely in this battle in terms of pace with McLaren?
MV: Well, it’s not about believing. It’s about where you finish in the last race, and we just keep working every race to be better and improve the situation. A lot can happen. If you asked me last year around this time, I’d have said, “Yeah, we’re going to win it. No problem.” But then a lot changed as well. It’s not for sure that it’s going to be straightforward to the end of the season. I think we still have to improve in areas, but that’s fine. We’ll try to find the improvements.
Q: Max, this is something of a home race for you. Are we going to see your daughter, Lily, coming trackside, maybe coming into the pits or staying home?
MV: No. It’s better she stays at home. It’s more relaxed for her.
Q: Alex, can we come to you? Can we start by talking about last night? There was the screening of F1: The Movie. Can we just get your thoughts on that first of all?
Alex ALBON: Yeah. We should ask Max… How was the movie? It was good. I think they’ve done a good balance, to be honest. It’s hard to not look at everything with a fine comb and just see it for what it is – just relax and watch it as a movie. I know you were there. I don’t know if you had the same impression, but I think for Hollywood and for what we do, they did a good job.
Q: Gabriel, can I bring you in on this as well? What did you think?
Gabriel BORTOLETO: I think it’s a very Hollywood one, but it’s nice. It’s going to be very good for those that still don’t know the sport so much. It’s going to be very good for our sport. For us drivers, we live this every day, so we know every detail. Some stuff we realise – I don’t want to give spoilers or anything – but that’s what I’m sure will be good for the sport. And for those that don’t know so much about Formula 1, they can learn and get involved with us.
Q: Alex, can I bring you back in? What about Imola? You were driving with a bit of rebel in you. You seemed to be enjoying yourself out there. Was that the best race you’ve driven for Williams?
AA: No. I wouldn’t say the best race. I don’t think it was my strongest weekend. I was actually on the back foot for most of the weekend, just not feeling that comfortable with the car, which is even more telling – that even when things aren’t going fantastically, we can still come home with a P5. What’s been good for us generally is we’ve made a step, clearly everywhere. Our race pace compared to the top teams as a midfield team is usually worse come race day than Saturday. But the last couple of races, we’ve actually been pretty much on the money with where we’ve left qualifying. It’s being putting us in contention with teams like Ferrari and even Mercedes. So, it’s been really enjoyable – more than anything, just to be able to mix it with the top teams has been a lot of fun. I’ve enjoyed that a lot. It’s a nice change.
Q: Has the improved performance been track-specific, or do you think you can be strong everywhere now?
AA: It’s interesting, because the last couple of tracks – we knew Miami would suit us. We didn’t expect Imola to suit us. We’ve definitely made setup changes along the way, but not to the point where we expected to be the speed we were at. So in many ways, it makes you think maybe we come here and we’re going to be just as quick. You’re kind of treading the line of careful optimism, where I think I think yes, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be quick here. But at the same time, were we just good in the last two races? I don’t know.
Q: Gabriel, can I just bring you back in? We saw improved pace from Sauber last weekend. Do you think that will translate to Monaco this weekend?
GB: I’m not so sure about that. I think Miami we were a bit better. In Q1 we went to Q2 with a bit more margin. Imola was not our best track. We went to Q2, but I don’t want to take any credit out. But at the end of the day, Yuki crashed and Berman got the lap deleted. It was not the best quali pace, but the race pace was a bit better. Unfortunately, we were not able to maximize the opportunities we got, so we didn’t manage to score any points. I think we are making progress, taking steps ahead. Let’s see – in Barcelona, we’re bringing a new package, so maybe that can be a very good thing for us.
Q: You finished on the podium in F2 here last year. How are you expecting this racetrack to feel in a Formula One car?
GB: Very tight. The F1 cars are quite big, and even driving the sim, you can see clearly it’s a super tight track. With these F1 cars going so quick, it’s going to be amazing. For a young driver, this is one of the races you always dream of racing – the Monaco GP in Formula One. I’m really looking forward to starting the weekend and learning this track with the F1 car. Even if I raced here in the past, the approach with F1 is completely different. It’s going to be very interesting. I’m looking forward to it.
QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR
Q: (David Croft – Sky Sports F1) Question for Max. I think we’re all in agreement that qualifying here this weekend could be the most important of the season. Take us through your approach to qualifying. You steadily get better as the sessions go on – do you push from the outset? Do you know how hard you can push by the time you get to Q3? Yuki Tsunoda said your approach is quite unique. Give us an insight into how you go into a qualifying session.
MV: I guess it also depends a bit where you are on the grid. Right? I’d say if you’re on the back, you need to push flat out in Q1 to try and make it out. So let’s first find out where we are in the grid. But then, yeah, Monaco is a special one where you do push, but the track is also coming to you quite a bit even in qualifying. So, you just have to be out at the right time. And of course, traffic can be a problem in Q1 – a lot of cars out there. It’s always that fine line of how much you’re willing to risk already, and making sure you’re in a good rhythm. At the end of the day, a lot is rhythm, because on a normal track it’s a bit more straightforward. The grip is good, you have space, you get quite comfortable. But around here, I don’t think you ever feel super comfortable. You’re always on the edge. So, through qualifying, follow the track, get into that nice rhythm. Make sure that the car is to your liking, make sure that the tyre is in the right window. It all sounds very easy, but it’s not that straightforward, unfortunately. And with the C6 compound now, I have no idea how they’re going to respond around here as well. That’s something we all have to figure out – all the drivers, all the teams.
Q: (Mara Sangiorgio – Sky Sports Italy). A question to Max. You usually love traditions. How much could this race change with the two mandatory stops in your opinion?
MV: I guess it can go both ways – it can be quite straightforward, or it can go completely crazy because of Safety Cars coming into play or not making the right calls. I think it will spice it up probably a bit more. Normally, with one stop, once you have a good pit stop and everything is fine, then you drive to the end and just stay focused and not hit the barrier. But maybe with a two-stop, it can create something different – people gambling, guessing when the right time is to box. So hopefully, it will spice it up a bit more.
Q: (Tom Slafer – DAZN Spain). Question for Max. You were talking about qualifying and your approach. Every time we come to the Monaco Grand Prix, at least in Spain, people post your lap of 2023 – the pole that could have been for Fernando. Was that Monaco 2023 Q3 lap the best one of your life?
MV: It was a good one, but honestly, around Monaco it’s always very tough to say “that was unbelievable” because you never really feel super comfortable. But at the time in ’23, I knew that I was down in the first two sectors, so I knew I had to risk a bit more. And it worked out well for me. It was a cool lap, and of course it meant a lot because it meant that you start first. Normally you win the race if you have a normal start. But like I said, normally, and now there’s a lot more that can go wrong with two stops. So, first, let’s see where we qualify and then we’ll see what happens. But for sure, ’23 was a good year and a cool qualifying around here.
Q: (Regine Anthonesson – ViaPlay) Question to Alex. Can you describe the feeling of a qualification out there in Monaco?
AA: Honestly, similar to what Max is saying. I think with these cars and the weight of them around such a narrow track like Monaco, and also with these softer tyres – it sounds strange, but it’s actually easy to overdrive. You have to wait for the track to come to you and be quite disciplined in your driving. You don’t want to feel out of control. You can get to a point where you take so much risk that you’re just not comfortable and you can’t build on it. What Max is saying about a bit more of a steady approach – when it comes to Q3 and your final lap is when you start pushing the limits of comfortability and you’re trading that with technique, lap time, and tire damage. It’s a bit of a mental game around here. It’s not just about taking as much risk as you can because it’s a street track. There’s a skill to it.
Q: (Mariana Becker – TV Bandeirantes) Alex, what are your worries – or the worries of a driver – when you think about two stops here? I can easily imagine everybody going into the pits on the first or second lap. What do you worry about? What are you going to bring to the team?
AA: I think the biggest thing is – obviously, we’re doing this to shake it up. And the worry is that it doesn’t shake it up and it just creates, like you’re saying, a lap-one situation where everyone starts to come into the pits and just tries to take some of the space and use lap two, three, four, five – whatever it may be – to push. Who knows? The biggest thing if you speak to the team, and I think every strategist, is that we don’t really know how it’s going to play out. Especially in the midfield, it’s team-mates and how they help each other. A good example would be Jeddah last year with Haas, when Kevin made a race where he basically parked the bus and allowed Nico to have a free stop. When you do work that around a track like here with two stops, that’s definitely possible. You don’t want a race like that. That’s not to say I think it’s a bad idea to do a two-stop. I think we need to try something – but it may not really change the style of the race.
Q: (Diego Mejía – Fox Sports Mexico) Many times this year – and last time at Imola – you had a poor Friday. You were overtaken by the McLarens on your race run, but yet you managed to be fighting for pole and win the race. Why is it that so many times the baseline is so out of the window and suddenly you’re able to come back so strong towards qualifying? And how important is the job that the drivers on the sim do?
MV: I wish I knew why the Fridays are not always great. We don’t do it on purpose, I swear. But it’s been a bit more difficult just to get the car in the right window. I do think we learned quite a bit actually in Imola – what we want from the car. It’s not always easy to extract that now on a street circuit compared to Imola, but it was a very useful lesson. It gave me more confidence to push. We do a lot of simulator work. Although we have the simulator drivers, we communicate what we want from the car, what we need. Unfortunately, our car over the last year and a half – maybe two years – has probably had quite a narrow window. As soon as you’re a little bit left or right, it becomes quite a bit more difficult to drive. That probably translates to a poor Friday. But the team is good at analysing and making the right calls for the next day. So, most of the time, we improve the situation – and in Imola, it improved quite a lot.
Q: (Panagiotis Seitanidis – Ant1 TV) A question for all three. You all have contracts for next year with the same teams and you will have different engines next year. From what you can share, how confident do you feel about next season and how much are you already involved in what your teams are doing for 2026? Maybe implementing new ideas and stuff. Max, let’s start with you.
MV: Yeah. Just the last few days, I was still at the factory designing the piston. So, yeah, I
think we found a good compromise. Now, I think it’s going to be a rocket ship. So, we’re ready! Honestly, I think no one – of course, you can always be very confident in what you’re doing, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. It matters what you deliver next year. So we’ll see. Time will tell.
AA: Yeah, I think especially if we’re not a factory team, then we’re even more out of the loop than maybe a team like Red Bull would be. But at the same time, in the end, it’s just more self-centred around our car. We’re more focused around that – trying to deliver the best car we can. The PU is the PU. It’s almost the second phase. (inaudible question) In terms of a design point of view, yes. From what I understand, we’re pretty clued up on where the geometry of the car is going to be. But that’s about it.
Q: Alex, how much 2026 sim work are you doing now?
AA: We’ve only really scratched the surface recently, and we’ll definitely ramp it up as the season goes on. For now, I think also because we’ve had a good start to the year so far, we’re maybe a little bit more focused on doing more prep toward the weekends themselves. Our time on the sim is quite valuable, and so far, we’ve shifted it a little bit more towards this year for now.
Q: Gabriel?
GB: I think it’s a bit difficult to know at this stage. It’s a bit too early, also comparing to other teams. Sometimes I try to ask Max, but he never tells me how they are doing with engine and car.
MV: If you tell me what you do, I can tell you a little bit of what I do.
GB: But I think we are in a different situation right now. You can help me more than I can.
MV: I’ll help you with the sim driving. I put the banker lap, and then you spend a hundred laps to beat it, and then we continue.
GB: That’s not true. I don’t spend a hundred laps. Only fifty! Anyway, I think we are still in an early stage. Some sim drivers are doing the work already in the sim for quite a while. But we are still focusing on 2025 and trying to improve a bit our car for now. I think it won’t take too long before Nico and I start to do the proper work for 2026 as well in the sim and understand where we are.
Q: (Ian Parkes – RacingNews365) Question for you, Max. At this stage of the season, it’s very much looking like a two McLaren versus one Red Bull battle for the Drivers’ title. How much would you now like Yuki Tsunoda to step up to the plate – not only to provide the team with great strategic options to help you out, but also potentially to provide you a bit of defence going up against Oscar and Lando?
MV: Well, I think as a team you want both cars in the best possible position. But look at 2023, for example. If we have a good car, you will be fast and then it doesn’t matter what the other teams do in terms of strategy because you will beat them. We have to make sure that we put ourselves back in that position. At the moment, sometimes it works – in Imola, it was fine. When the car is working and you are comfortable with what you’re doing, then it doesn’t matter what the other strategies are from the other cars or teams around you because you just follow your own strongest strategy. But naturally, as a team, we want to finish one-two every single weekend – but that’s tough at the moment. We have very strong competition. McLaren is doing a great job. So we just keep working, trying to improve – for myself, for Yuki – and we’ll see in the coming races what we can do.
Q: (Alan Baldwin – Reuters) Max, I think you were the only driver who missed the screening of the movie last night. I know there are obvious reasons with a young baby and domestic life, but are you planning on watching the movie? Are you interested in it?
MV: Yeah. I notified FOM about that. They were well aware that I wasn’t attending. I wanted to spend more private time, because it is private time at the end of the day – the evening also. I think it’s coming out on June 27? I’ll download it on Apple. So yeah. Of course, I get it – there was the opportunity to watch it, but if I watch it now or in three or four weeks, that’s fine as well. I heard good stuff from the movie, so I’m sure it’s going to be exciting.
Q: (Luke Smith – The Athletic) Max, I know you’re maybe not the biggest fan of events like Miami and Vegas, that have put more focus on the show than the spectacle on the track. But do you feel Monaco – just with the history and everything – still has that balance right? Is it still the history that buys into this being a really great race?
MV: From when I started to now, I don’t think it has changed a lot. It’s very exciting. Like I explained before, the format – the qualifying – is very important. The track, like I said, is narrow. These cars that we have currently are, for me personally, a little bit too big. It would be better if we go back to some smaller, narrower cars. I think that would only help racing here around Monaco. Hopefully, we can achieve that a bit. I know the coming cars are going to be a little bit smaller, but I think it’s still not enough. Hopefully, in the future we can try and make them smaller again. But we’ll see.
Q: (Carlo Platella – Formula Passion) Max, last year you were complaining quite a lot about a car that was jumping all around. You described it as a go-kart. Do you expect the new car has improved in this area?
MV: Yeah. I don’t know, really. I guess we’ll find out tomorrow. But it is a fact that that’s normally not our strong point. We’ll see. I have no idea how it will respond.
Q: (Diletta Colombo – Automoto.it) Question for Max. Is consistency the key to keeping your hopes alive for the title? And if so, how difficult is it to be consistent with a car with such a narrow operating window?
MV: I think, of course, if you want to win a championship, you have to be consistent anyway. But I think what we have to focus on is just performance. The more performance we have, the easier we make it for ourselves. That’s what we’re trying to do – finding more performance in our car, better tire life, all these kinds of things together. That’s our focus now for the rest of the year. I mean, everyone is doing that, but we want more.
Q: (Giuseppe Marino – Motorionline.com) Max, I think that you are driving better than ever. Is this your best moment in Formula 1 for you?
MV: Yeah. I mean, it’s going well. But this is something that I think you can’t consistently ask of yourself. You want to try and improve. Some weekends are better than others. But overall, I’m quite pleased. But you can also not be fully satisfied. You always analyze everything that can be done better – even on the positive weekends, but naturally also on the negative ones. And I’m sure you never stop learning in Formula One.
Q: (Rodrigo França – Car Magazine Brazil) Question to Max and also a comment for Gabriel. Max, you seem to help Gabriel a lot, like a young brother. In Brazil, we say there’s a bit of a bromance between you two. Gabi, can you comment on your older brother saying he’s faster than you on the sim?
GB: That’s a lie, first of all. It depends. When we drive together, I start beating him, then he goes and changes the whole set-up of the car to make it difficult. Then I spend a couple of hours trying to beat his lap time, and he goes around telling everyone, “I beat Gabi and he’s taken me two hours to beat me again”. So…
MV: Yeah. I mean, it’s good. I like the competition. We used to do this already when Gabi was still in F3, F2. Now it’s nice – both of us are in Formula 1. Whenever we have free time, we race. Of course, with the Formula 1 cars, but also any form of gaming to be honest. It’s great that you can do that as drivers together. Gabi had quite a similar route to F1. He started in karting with CRG. He was telling me stories with the boss, with Giancarlo at the time – who I also grew up with. So, it’s very nice. Wherever I can say something or advise, I think I’m quite an open book, so I do that. And besides that, the healthy rivalry we have when we are on the simulator preparing for a weekend or whatever – it’s good. You do battles, hot lapping at the same time, trying to beat each other. It’s fun.
Q: Can we see you two as teammates in sim racing in the future?
MV: Well, yeah, it depends on Gabi. I’m already competing. It’s more about his free time and what he wants to dedicate.
GB: No, I’m already spending a lot of time on sim racing as well. But, yeah, why not? If Max invites me to do some endurance racing, I’m happy to do it.