Monegasque resident and Toro Rosso driver Sébastien Buemi was in the FIA press conference at the Monaco Grand Prix this afternoon. Here’s what he had to say…
The folly of running the most logistically complex race as the second part of a back-to-back, just a few days after the Spanish Grand Prix, was clear to see in Monaco today as the pits and paddock were not at their usual state of readiness, with teams frantically rushing to put the finishing touches to their garages and motorhomes.
That was also the case for our Energy Station, even though much of the infrastructure had been in place since last week. And on the subject of motorhomes, the Mercedes team has waded into the “anything you can do, we can do bigger” school of hospitality with a massive grey edifice dwarfing the majority of other units. Causing a major headache for the security people is the fact the paddock Swipe Gates appear to have gone missing, somewhere between Spain and here, so the paddock area is overrun with members of the public who were smart enough to get in, before the security forces arrived.
In Barcelona, Jaime Alguersuari was much in demand with the media, as a local driver and today, it was Sébastien Buemi, the Monegasque resident, who was called into the FIA Press Conference. Asked about his run of bad luck with some reliability problems and accidents over the past few GPs, our Swiss driver expressed the hope that his run of bad luck would end this weekend. “In any case, I think we have a good car and the recent updates, although quite small, worked a bit better than we had expected, so I still believe getting into Q3 soon should be a possibility. I just hope I can have a clean weekend to get the benefit of having a car that is very consistent in terms of its performance over a race distance.”
All the drivers in the conference, most of them with much more experience than Sébastien, were asked what it means to them to be racing in F1. “Ever since I started karting about ten years ago, I dreamed of being here,” said the Toro Rosso man. “I hope I will continue in this sport for many more years, as I am very proud to be here racing against the best drivers and teams in motor sport.”
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