Bahrain Grand Prix 2020 – Race

Race Notes

• George Russell finished 12^th and Nicholas Latifi 14^th in the Bahrain Grand Prix
• George started 14^th on the medium Pirelli tyre, with Nicholas lining up 20^th on the hard compound
• The race was red flagged on lap one due to an horrific crash for Romain Grosjean, with both drivers taking a new set of medium tyres in the over hour-long delay
• George subsequently ran a two-stop race, pitting first on lap 20 for the hard Pirelli tyre, and finally for the medium compound on lap 39
• Nicholas also stopped twice during the race, initially on lap 21 for the medium compound tyre, and once again for the hard on lap 37

Dave Robson, Head of Vehicle Performance: Firstly, we send our best wishes to Romain Grosjean and Lance Stroll, as well as our colleagues at Haas and Racing Point. The incidents that each suffered were unusual and we are thankful that they each walked away without serious injury.

Secondly, Bahrain delivered a good race with a range of strategies and some good overtaking. We are pleased with our performance today and we have a lot of positives to take away, some of which we can apply to the race next week. Both drivers completed strong races, following difficult initial race starts. It was a shame to finish such a good race behind the safety car, and again close to the points, however, it was a strong weekend overall and we have set ourselves up nicely for the challenge of the Sakhir Grand Prix next week.

George Russell: I am pleased with the job we have done this weekend. I dropped places on the initial start but from the restart I came from P18 to P12, and in the race managed to keep Vettel behind us, whilst overtaking Giovinazzi, Magnussen plus fighting with Kvyat. I think it is a job we can be pleased with, and I think we can leave saying we got everything out of this weekend. It’s not a point but it is the maximum that we could do today.

It is incredible that Romain walked away from the crash today. I am just pleased that he is ok and extremely thankful that we have the halo. I am proud of the work that the FIA and F1 have done for the safety over the recent years.

Nicholas Latifi: The first start was very tricky but we got a much better start on the second one, and moved up a bit, but then I made a misjudgement whilst battling for position on the subsequent lap. Still, I am pretty pleased with the race. Tyre degradation was the big factor to manage and I think we did a good job. We had a strong strategy which meant I could achieve the target which was to get ahead of the Haas and the Alfa. Obviously, you always want more, there are some things that could have been better as it wasn’t an easy race out there, but I am pretty pleased with the result.

I wish Romain a speedy recovery, you never like to see something like that, it just shows you that the risk is always there in motorsport.