Toro Rosso
Carlos Sainz: “Not the best of endings to a race that was looking good… It was a tough start to the race and during the first stint I struggled a bit, but as soon as I pitted for another set of tyres we picked up the pace and started to push. From then on, it was all going really well, running comfortably in P9 and waiting for the rain to arrive, but suddenly my car just switched off and that was the end. It’s a very frustrating way to end the weekend here at such an amazing track as Silverstone.”
Max Verstappen: “A very short race for me unfortunately. I didn’t have the best of starts and I suffered from a lot of wheel-spin. Luckily I was able to escape from the crashes that happened in front of me, but when the race restarted after the Safety Car period I suddenly lost the rear of the car at Turn 2. Even though I only damaged the front wing a bit, I wasn’t able to reverse and my race ended there. A shame, but we can’t change it now so we just need to focus on the next race, keep my head up and come back stronger.”
Franz Tost (Team Principal): “We clearly expected a much better result today because the car has shown a very good performance this weekend. Max lost the rear of the car and therefore he couldn’t continue, while Carlos had to retire when his car stopped because of what seems to be an electrical issue. Of course this is very disappointing because I think that both cars had the potential to finish in the points, but instead we’ve ended up with two retirements. The fact that our direct competitors have scored points isn’t helpful for our championship hopes either. We will now analyse the reasons for these retirements and we hope to come back fully-prepared for the next race in Hungary in two weeks’ time.”
Cedrik Staudohar (Renault Sport F1 track support leader): “Both drivers had a strong pace and it is frustrating that neither driver could capitalize on the performance. The engine stopped in Carlos’ car as a result of an electrical issue. We will determine the cause when we study the car in more detail. Max retired when he went off track, but we need to take the positives from the weekend as a whole and look forward to Hungary where we hope to be on the pace again.”
