Monaco Thursday quotes: Lotus

Heikki Kovalainen - 18th: "Not too bad at all. We completed the whole programme, worked a bit on fine tuning the balance and I think with some more work tonight there's a bit more to come. The degradation levels on both tyres was better than many people were expecting and I think both the primes and the options will give us some interesting strategy options to play with."

Thierry Salvi, Renault Sport F1 Support Leader: "This was a good day. We have put a lot of miles on the cars and with the unique nature of this track we can have driveability problems so it's important to set up the engine to give the drivers something they are happy with. The feedback we have had so far looks like we have found a good setup so I think we are set for a good P3 and qualifying."

Mike Gascoyne, Chief Technical Officer: "A very useful first day of running with no mechanical issues with either car. The track had its normal issues with dirt and traffic but overall we're very happy. Tyre degradation looks to be much lower than expected and we have accumulated a lot of data that will be good for the race. In performance terms we are really quite close to the cars in front and with the improvements we expect to see on Saturday I think this has been another good day for the team."

Riad Asmat, Chief Executive Officer: "That sort of performance is very encouraging. It is good to see that we have we had another day without reliability problems and today everything went how we wanted it to. Finishing around half a second from the guys ahead gives us something to fight for in qualifying and I think the experience we have in both cars, and throughout the team, should give us a good chance of having another good day on Saturday."