Monteiro delighted with Midland progress

"It's been a great weekend so far. I'm so happy for the team," said Monteiro after posting the 16th quickest time.

"They were so excited when I got out of the car. In fact, I think they were actually more excited that I was to get into the second session, so I'm really happy for them. They all deserve it; we've been working so hard.

"As you can see, for the past few races - since about Nurburgring, I would say - we've been progressing, and that's very encouraging, so I'm glad I was able to show our true pace today.

"We should have done it in Monaco but it didn't work out, so I'm glad for the whole team that we could accomplish this today. It feels amazing, and the car has been handling very well since yesterday. Now we've got a long race ahead tomorrow and another opportunity to show how much we've improved."

His teammate Christijan Albers, hit by mechanical problems in the morning, was unable to match Monteiro's achievement, but finished just two places behind.

"It's a shame, because I had a lot of bad luck today," Albers said. "We had a mechanical problem in morning practice and a misjudgement on my last timed run - we lost too much time in the garage, and I was pretty sure we would have been able to set a quick time.

"The good news is that the car feels nicely balanced and I have lots of spare tyres available for tomorrow."