Monaco Thursday quotes: Virgin

Lucas di Grassi - 20th: "It was a very good day, despite running with the old car. I felt comfortable straight away with the way the car was behaving here in Monaco. I think we are closer to the other teams than we were in Barcelona and in Free Practice 2 I was able to finish ahead of one of the Lotus cars and do a lot of laps. We had a small issue in Free Practice 1, no problems at all in Free Practice 2, so I'm very confident we can have a strong qualifying on Saturday. It's a very important race here and we have to qualify well here and finish the race."

Nick Wirth, Technical Director: "A very productive day for the team. Lucas experienced a gearbox issue this morning in P1 which shortened his first session, whereas Timo had a positive set of runs. In P2, Lucas made clear progress with his setup, but sadly got the timing of his new option tyre run to coincide precisely with the rain shower! Timo had a gearbox sensor failure at the beginning of P2 which degraded his shifts and lost him time all session, plus his option tyre running was also done during the start of the shower. Nevertheless, we have gathered a good amount of data on both cars, and we look forward to putting it all together, along with some new aero parts arriving tonight, when we start again Saturday."