lap slower than teammate Heinz-Harald Frentzen in the first four Grands Prix. Sauber released a statement clarifying that Wendlinger had not been sacked, and that he would still test for the team with a view to improving his performance. Boullion, who made his Formula One début as a result, was loaned to Sauber by Frank Williams, who was keen to use the known quantity of his test driver to evaluate Frentzen's potential for a future race seat in his team. Frentzen was in his second season of Formula One, but this event also marked his first race start at Monaco, as Sauber had withdrawn him from the previous year's race after Wendlinger's accident. The state of the Simtek team's finances was also a major topic of interest. On the Thursday before the race weekend, team principal Nick Wirth held a press conference in which he admitted that the outfit faced imminent closure unless it received money that had been promised by various sponsors. Wirth admitted that Simtek faced a budget shortfall of several million dollars needed to complete the season, part of which was due to him being the victim of "a broken deal". He also pledged to arrange a meeting of all Simtek's financial backers over the race weekend in an attempt to raise additional capital, and that the team would not travel to the following Canadian Grand Prix, an expensive "fly-away" race, unless a rescue package was negotiated successfully. The team was already reduced to three gearboxes for the Monaco race meeting. Due to the configuration of the Circuit de Monaco, with its low average speed and abundance of low-speed corners, allied to the low-grip nature of the public road surface, the teams all set their cars up to produce the maximum amount of downforce and mechanical grip possible. Ferrari introduced a revised rear wing and diffuser design for the 412T2 chassis, allowing more space for downforce-generating winglets around the rear bodywork. The team also introduced two new suspension configurations, one used by Alesi and the other tested by Berger on his spare car. As was traditional at Monaco, Ferrari also brought an additional spare car, bringing the team's total number of chassis to four. The Sauber team introduced new front and rear wings and a revised diffuser, in addition to a slightly lightened C14 chassis design. Benetton, Footwork and Tyrrell also added additional flaps and wings to