Dave Robson, Head of Vehicle Performance: The hot conditions made for tough race with all drivers needing to manage the cars and tyres throughout. The safety car was temptingly timed but did make for a tricky long final stint on the Prime tyres. Our cars were too close to each other to be able stop both on the same lap and so Nicky did an extra lap, which meant that he didn’t get the full advantage of pitting behind the safety car.
Both drivers managed the race well but unfortunately Nicky had to retire following a puncture and extensive car damage. Alex was able to battle to the end but had to manage his fuel and tyres against quicker cars and wasn’t able to fight for the points.
It was good to get a lot of extra racing laps on the new package and all the data and feedback collected will help us at the remaining races.
Alex Albon: It was tricky out there today but more enjoyable. We were in contention for most of the race and were looking close to the points – we were a bit down on pace and were using a lot of the tyres to try to stay close, and it just fell away from us towards the end. We’ll look at the data and hopefully we can improve week on week as we were quite quick in qualifying. We’ll look at it and see what we can do better for Hungary.
Nicholas Latifi: There are a lot of positives to take from today. The pace was competitive, especially in dirty air, and I was racing cars that I haven’t been racing against all year so that’s been nice. I definitely don’t think I was at fault for the incident with Kevin, it was maybe more of a racing incident. The incident was a shame as our pace was strong and we were racing out of position against cars that we were quite a bit quicker than. Being further up in qualifying would have made a difference, but it’s nice to get racing again. I take the confidence in that pace from the upgrade and I feel that the season is getting back on track and we can make a proper start now.
No comment