• Pastor Maldonado finished 11th with Valtteri Bottas 13th in tonight’s Singapore Grand Prix.
• Pastor had a good start and managed the tyres well to finish just outside the points.
• Valtteri had a clutch problem at the start and debris in his front wing which compromised the performance of his car throughout the race.
Xevi Pujolar, Chief Race Engineer: Pastor had a good start, gaining a few positions and managing his tyres well in the early stages. Valtteri was unable to hold position at the start due to a clutch problem and consequently struggled with his tyres fighting to regain position. Valtteri’s race was further compromised by debris in his front wing meaning he didn’t have the pace to challenge for position. WUnder the safety car we pitted both cars for their second stops to move onto the prime medium tyre. We were looking at the data to see if we could go to the end but when it became clear that we needed to stop again we switched both cars back onto supersofts. Pastor was then able to fight to the end gaining two positions in the final stages to finish P11. Both Pastor and Valtteri drove a solid race today in challenging conditions but we need to find more performance from the car if we want to be consistently fighting for points.
Pastor Maldonado: We recovered two places at the start and after a couple of laps we were pushing towards the cars in front whilst also trying to manage the rear tyres. My tyre management was good throughout the race and I was able to push hard in the final stages on the supersoft tyres. We just missed out on points in the end, but we’ll be looking to progress a step further in the next race.
Valtteri Bottas: It was one of the most difficult races of the whole season for me today. Immediately at the start we had a problem with the clutch which meant we lost a few positions. After the safety car we had a few problems with debris in the front wing, which made the car difficult to drive. These limiting factors meant we couldn’t go any faster today and so we did the best we could with what we had.
Laurent Debout, Renault Sport F1 team support leader: The end result flatters us slightly as we were not as competitive as we would have liked. It is disappointing to miss out on the points again but Korea is a very different track and should play to the strengths of the car more. We’ll look forward to this race now.
No comment