Friday’s dual qualifying in Formula 3 saw Gabriele Minì take his second pole position at Monaco in a session filled with near-misses and red flags. Feeder Series spoke to Minì, Christian Mansell and Luke Browning about the crucial role of tyres throughout the two races and the difficulty of overtaking on a track like Monaco.

By Tori Turner

Unlike any other track on the calendar, Monaco requires a special qualifying format for F3 due to the 30 drivers in the series. Rather than one half-hour session, qualifying is split into two groups, each lasting only fifteen minutes, halving the usual running time the drivers are used to. This format naturally benefits the second group, as they experience favourable track conditions and benefit from the rubber already laid down by the first group.  

A red flag disrupted Group B’s session with less than a minute remaining when Sebastián Montoya and Charlie Wurz hit the barriers at Sainte Devote. This incident prevented us from knowing if there would have been a true advantage for the second group.

The talk of tyres also came into play during the end of Group A’s session, with many teams reporting that the rear tyres were overheating. Issues like this can cause the tyres to lose optimal performance, preventing drivers from setting faster laps. 

Polesitter Gabriele Minì noticed the potential issue during qualifying himself. “It’s not only in Monaco but it’s even more here because if you are not up to temperature on the first push laps you might end up in the wall, so tyre warm-up is always a critical point. With the going of the laps, especially at the end of the last push for us in quali, they just start overheating and it becomes much harder.”

Christian Mansell, who topped Group B’s session with a time of 1:24.921 to place second on the grid, also spoke of the importance of warming up tyres. “In general, F3 is mainly about the tyres. You can have the best balance in the world but if you don’t warm the tyres it’s absolutely useless,” he told Feeder Series.

“Considering this track is quite low energy, you really, really just need to make sure that you have front temp because the rear comes in quite easy with these cars. You basically just do two or three big traction zones and then they’re basically already kind of warm, even on the out lap. We’re sort of managing it from that perspective.” he added, highlighting how tyre management extends to the fronts as well as the rears.

This weekend also marks the first use of Pirelli’s soft compound tyres in this year’s championship. The previous rounds in Imola and Melbourne used the medium compound, while the season-opener in Bahrain featured the hards. This shift from medium to soft benefitted Mansell during qualifying.

“We’ve had a really tough time figuring out this medium tyre,” he said about previous struggles in Melbourne and Imola. He had previously achieved a podium finish in Bahrain’s feature race on the hard tyres. 

The significance of balance

Hitech GP driver Luke Browning also mentioned that finding balance will be another important factor in the races on Saturday and Sunday.

“I think [tyre] warm-up won’t be so much of an issue but it’s more the balances that you go through with this graining phase. Here it’s so, so easy to make a mistake. If you slightly go through the rear first, you could go into T3 and lose the rear, go into T9 and lose the rear. All it takes is for you to lose the rear, for example, into the last swimming pool chicane and take too much kerb and it’s race over. It’s not easy,” Browning told Feeder Series, drawing from his own experiences throughout the session. 

After brushing the wall on his final run, Browning was unable to improve on his previous laps, allowing Minì to set several purple sectors and secure yet another pole position around the streets of Monte Carlo. Browning’s mistake could have been more costly, ending with him in the barriers and a red flag, which potentially could have lost him his fastest lap time.

“Pirelli have made a tyre that is great for learning and is very driver-induced and also very balance-dependent. Depending on how it goes, it could be an interesting race but one to manage your limitations and not make any mistakes,” he added.

Difficult to pass

Minì also expressed that the overall difficulty of passing at Monaco, coupled with tyre graining, might play a bigger role than tyre temperature in the two races.

“I believe that in Monaco, at least with what it looked like last year, it is really hard to overtake. It’s really hard to even follow because there are so many low speeds, so unless you have double the pace of the guy in front with a two-second gap, it’s really hard to stay close in the various low-speed traction points,” Minì told Feeder Series.  “In the end, even if you really have a lot of graining – I think we will probably lose around two-three seconds a lap towards the end of the race – I think it will still be hard to overtake. So [tyre wear] is a factor, but I don’t know how much it will play into making us overtake or not.”

Mansell echoed Minì’s words on both overtaking and tyre graining. “It’s quite hard to pass around here, almost impossible to pass around here if you don’t have a massive delta on the guy ahead of you, so it’s one thing to benefit yourself by making sure your tyres are warm but then the management part comes in,” he said.

“Last year a big talking point was the left front and how much it was graining so it’s just, sort of, trying to not do that this year would be important. I think it might be near impossible to not get this tyre to grain but you can definitely try to prolong it for as much as you can.”

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency