Max Verstappen did not realise how good his headline-grabbing lap in FP1 was until he looked up at the timing screen and saw his name beneath Lewis Hamilton's.
Verstappen was the star of the show on Thursday morning, finishing just over a tenth behind the world champion on a track he had never driven on before with a lap in the closing seconds of the session. But the teenager admits he was not expecting to be so high when he crossed the line.
"I was surprised," Verstappen admitted. "I was looking after the flag, I was looking up to the screen and I couldn't find myself, the I looked a bit further up and I went 'oh... alright, that was a good lap then!' The whole session I was building up slowly, but already from the simulator to here was very helpful, so I felt straight away very good on the track and I could get a lot of confidence from myself."
Most impressive of all was the fact it was Verstappen's first day driving the iconic street circuit.
When asked how long it took to adapt to mentally after "between 200 and 300" laps of the circuit in the simulator, he replied: "10 laps. You don't want to take a lot of risk at the beginning so I just built it up, adjust my braking points... cornering wise I felt quite comfortable from the start. If you adjust your braking point, you get more temperature in the tyres and brakes and everything works better."
Team-mate Carlos Sainz, who has arguably had an even more impressive rookie season than Verstappen so far, finished fifth in FP1 and admits he was taking a more conservative approach as he had the whole weekend in mind.
"I was out there and I couldn't see properly the track. The tarmac is so black on the resurfaced areas so you cannot see if it was damp on that part or not, so I took a very, very calm approach, to be honest. Especially around here at Monaco I want to build on my weekend little by little, I don't want to make any stupid mistakes. I think that's the right approach and in FP2 I started pushing a bit more and feeling a bit more comfortable and getting everything a bit together."