Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd
Gabriele Mini hopes he “can keep this trend going” after he won the Monaco Formula 3 feature race for the second time and gained the championship lead.
The Prema driver proved his skills on the streets of the principality by clinching pole position and Sunday victory for a second year in a row.
“If there is only one win you want to get in the season, it is for sure the one of Monaco,” the Alpine junior told media including Formula Scout after the race.
“Most of the job was done in qualifying. It’s really hard to overtake as you know around Monaco. Even for us, there was a lot of degradation. During the race I just had to try and manage the tyres. I didn’t feel like I could have gone for the fastest lap.
“Once the job was done at the end, it was of course a lot of emotions going on.”
“It was a lot about braking late for Turn 1,” the Alpine Formula 1 junior said when asked what the biggest challenge was.
Leaping up from fourth place to lead the championship by four points, Mini believes he is not “at the peak” of his form yet, but acknowledged that he and his team had made “good steps forward in the latest rounds”.
Asked by Formula Scout to expand on that progression and whether it can be continued, he said: “It’s both coming a bit from the team, you know, getting to know my driving style a bit better. And also me getting to know the car better. And just think it’s really the tyre. Just sometimes maybe you just try to follow someone, you push a bit too much, and then you just ruin it.
“Every time we go on track, we always try to improve, but I think sometimes it’s also race dependent.
“Because, for example, I feel like in the sprint race in Bahrain we were really quick and then we missed a lot of pace in the feature. While it was the same case in Melbourne, you know. It’s just about putting it all together in the feature race, to be honest, in the latest events, which we did both in Imola and here.
“In the end here the pace doesn’t really matter too much in the race. I just tried to manage the pace at the beginning so I had a bit more rubber compared to my competitors left, in order to make sure to pull a gap at the end.”
“Hopefully we can keep this trend going on for the next races too,” he added.