• Valtteri Bottas finished 14th and Pastor Maldonado 16th in today’s Canadian Grand Prix.
• Starting from third on the grid, Valtteri struggled to match the pace of the front runners in the first stint on the supersoft tyres. Pastor also suffered high tyre degradation and then was compromised further by an early collision with Sutil which led to a drive-through penalty.
• The team will take positives from its performance in qualifying yesterday and will be working hard to improve the overall pace of the FW35 in time for its home race at the British Grand Prix.
Mike Coughlan, Technical Director: We knew Valtteri’s grid position was not representative of our current pace, but we had hoped to be able to challenge for some points. The tyre degradation was quite high on the supersoft tyres though and we lost time in the first stint with both cars, which compromised our race. The medium tyre was working better which allowed us to do longer middle stints, but we weren’t able to gain an advantage on anyone around us. Pastor was also compromised by a drive-through penalty but then pushed hard to close the gap, finishing 16th. Valtteri drove a solid race without making any mistakes, but ultimately the pace wasn’t in the car to enable him to hold a top ten position today. We need to keep the momentum going following our qualifying performance to keep working hard to improve ahead of our home race at Silverstone.
Valtteri Bottas: We fought hard to try and secure some points today but ultimately we just didn’t have the pace in the car. I didn’t get a great start which allowed a few cars to jump me on the first lap, and in the dry conditions we simply couldn’t match the level of competitiveness we showed yesterday. The tyre wear in the first stint was also high which made it tough to stay in the top ten. Nevertheless I feel like I have learnt a lot from the race today and as a team we can take positives from the weekend. Hopefully we can continue to make progress and have a stronger race at Silverstone with the home crowd cheering us on.
Pastor Maldonado: We were expecting a better result today in the race. We knew we didn’t have the top speed to challenge at the front, but we struggled for pace right from the beginning of the race. The car felt better in the wet conditions compared to the dry hot weather we saw today so we need to understand why. After the good result with Valtteri yesterday, it was a tough weekend for us to end with neither car in the points. There are now three weeks until the next race so we need to keep working to improve our overall race performance.
Laurent Debout, Renault Sport F1 team support leader: There have been a lot of signs of improvement here this weekend so it’s a shame that we could not convert them into points. All the same third on the grid yesterday was a good confidence booster for everyone and something to take forward to the team’s home race in three weeks’ time.
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