F1 Paddock Notebook - Monaco GP Thursday

With a round-up of all the additional news and notes from the paddock in Monaco on Thursday, Crash.net F1 Editor Luke Smith brings you his notebook.

- Daniel Ricciardo’s fastest time of the day during FP2 marks a new track record at Monaco. His lap of 1m11.841s is three-tenths of a second below the previous record held by Kimi Raikkonen (1m12.178s) that was set during the final stage of qualifying for last year’s race.

- As revealed on Wednesday, Pierre Gasly ran with an updated floor and rear brake drums on his Toro Rosso car in FP1 and FP2, but trailed teammate Brendon Hartley - running without the updates - in both sessions. Gasly said a more representative picture of their benefit would come in Canada. Hartley will get the new parts on Saturday.

- FP1 saw drivers hit the track with much more grip afforded to them from the start than in the past, benefitting from the Formula 2 practice running that took place first thing in the day. In previous years, F1 was first out on the green Monaco circuit.

- Valtteri Bottas debuted his special Mika Hakkinen tribute helmet in FP1 on Thursday. Hakkinen was Bottas’ hero when growing up and aspiring to reach F1. Brendon Hartley and Charles Leclerc were among the other drivers to showcase their new one-off helmets for the race weekend.

- Mercedes debuted a subtly tweaked livery in FP1, changing the colour of its Petronas wording on the side of the car from white to black.

- Running was interrupted by just one red flag on Thursday, called midway through FP2 when part of the track came up between Casino Square and Mirabeau, resulting in a 15-minute repair.

- The only major stewards’ investigation of the day came as a result of Max Verstappen’s potentially unsafe reverse manoeuvre to the track after running straight on at Sainte Devote in FP1. The stewards did not award a penalty, though, deeming him not to have caused any danger after reviewing the footage and talking with Verstappen.

- Nico Hulkenberg, Pierre Gasly, Romain Grosjean, Stoffel Vandoorne and Brendon Hartley will race with new gearboxes this weekend. As all are within the regulations, no penalties will be applied to the drivers.

- Romain Grosjean, Kevin Magnussen, Marcus Ericsson, Charles Leclerc, Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez will all be racing with some new engine elements in Monaco this weekend. None will trigger a penalty though, all keeping within their allowance for the season.

- Pierre Gasly, Charles Leclerc, Lance Stroll, Carlos Sainz Jr. and Sebastian Vettel were all hit with fines for speeding in the pit lane through practice.

- Despite seeing high levels of degradation on the Hypersoft tyre, Pirelli is widely expecting it to still be a one-stop race in Monaco on Sunday. The Hypersoft is estimated to offer a one second per lap gain over the Ultrasoft.

- Pirelli F1 chief Mario Isola also confirmed that we are likely to see more steps between tyre choices later in the season, skippin a compound as in Germany. This was seen in the selections for Hungary that came out on Thursday, which are Medium, Soft and Ultrasoft (skipping Supersofts).