Fernando Alonso has no expectations of a midfield team, even McLaren, offering a threat to the domination of the top three teams during the Monaco GP.
With the unique demands of the twisty street circuit as well as a short lap time, the gap between the front and the back of the grid is often among the smallest seen all year and does sometimes allow smaller teams to be more competitive.
However, such is the pace difference on a normal track, the Spaniard thinks even the possibility of a weakened Mercedes remains fast enough to maintain the usual pecking order.
“Obviously it’s a different and very unique layout and weekend but at the same time there are not many surprises here,” he said on Wednesday.
“It’s never a place that we had a midfield team winning a race or a small team winning a race, or doing the pole position.
“There’s always a lot of expectations in Monaco, but then there’s a Red Bull, Mercedes or Ferrari in pole position, and three of these six drivers are on the podium in the last editions.
“So I think it’s going to be quite similar this year again.”
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Monte Carlo is a race that McLaren have historically been strong at and expectations are that they will be leading the midfield at least after making a step forward with their chassis at the Spanish GP.
“I think it’s quite difficult to make a surprise, but it’s quite easy to make a mistake, so it’s a weekend that’s important, in all the aspects, to execute it well,” Alonso explained.
“Last year the car was quite strong here. Stoffel [Vandoorne] was P6 in Q1, P7 in Q2, so I think P7 was possible last year.
“I think this year we saw in some circuits we perform a little bit better than we expect, some others we perform a little bit worse than we expect initially, so difficult to predict here.
“Around P5 to P10 should be our target, but it’s difficult to predict right now.”