How special is to have another chance to race on the streets of Monaco again?
It’s always a big challenge to race here in Monaco . For sure I was thinking last year, maybe I will miss that challenge, but it’s always a different challenge to get Monaco . You’re always learning things, every year. The way of driving corner is quite tricky. I think this year will be even a bigger challenge. Tyres are wider. The car is bigger and the track is still quite narrow.

You have started every single race in the top ten this year. But you have only scored 18 points so far. What is going wrong on Sunday?
I had sixth position in my pocket in Russia and I had this puncture in the tyres. I had to stop. In the last race, I had a good start but I touched Alonso because of the incident between Kimi (Räikkönen) and Max (Verstappen) in the first corner. I definitely had the pace to finish in front of the Force India.

Is it realistic to believe that you can be strong here after the last three difficult years?
In the last three years, Monaco was the worst race for us. It was terrible. The feeling that you have here on this track, definitely was not the right track for our car. But you need to keep in mind this time it’s different rules, different challenge for so many different reasons. I can be a little more optimistic is that in the last sector in Barcelona we were not so bad this time. So the car can be a little more competitive here this year.

(Photo Jean-François Galeron)