Toro Rosso
Max Verstappen: “I’m disappointed. It certainly wasn’t the best of race starts, as I got clipped because the cars in front of me crashed and from then on it was a very difficult race. I had a lot of damage on the car, especially at the rear, and it wasn’t behaving as it should’ve been. It was very difficult for me to continue, but we tried to, hoping we could get back into the points, even though in the end it wasn’t possible.”
Carlos Sainz: “What a disappointing way to end what was being such a good race! But I have to say that I’m happy I could race after what happened yesterday. Today’s was a good performance in difficult conditions. I started from P20, pushed hard and suddenly I found myself in P7… We could’ve even ended in P6! Towards the end of the race I was warned to look after my brakes as the temperatures were very high and I was managing to do that while still racing at a good pace. Unfortunately, with only eight laps to go the brakes said ‘enough’ at Turn 13 and that was the end of my race. I have to be thankful to the whole team, they did a great job for me to be racing out there today after yesterday’s crash. The car was in perfect conditions. Now I will certainly get some rest during the next couple of days!”
Franz Tost (Team Principal): “It was a very difficult and emotional race weekend for the team, with a lot of up and downs. Of course, Carlos’ crash in yesterday’s FP3 was the worst moment, especially the minutes just after the accident, when we didn’t know what had happened as we lost all radio connections. Fortunately, everybody was delighted once we found out he wasn’t injured and that he was in a position to race today. Max did a very good qualifying yesterday, finishing in P9, which showed the potential of the car. Today in the race, unfortunately he wasn’t able to avoid the collision between Ericsson and Hulkenberg at Turn 2, as he was hit and damaged his tyre. He came back to the pits and we changed it, but we also saw that the floor and the rear suspension were also damaged, so his race was compromised because of this. He attacked and did a good race, but in the end he couldn’t do more than finish in P11 unfortunately. Carlos did a fantastic race. He was on the way to a sixth or seventh position finish, because he was 10 seconds ahead of Kvyat, who finished in P6. He had some problems with the front-left brake, which was overheating, so therefore he had to retire. Currently we don’t understand how this happened, because the data shows that the brake system worked quite well from the beginning onwards, but with only ten laps to go suddenly the temperatures increased dramatically. It would’ve been a fantastic recovery for Carlos after yesterday’s accident.”
Cedrik Staudohar (Renault Sport F1 track support leader): “First of all, everyone is really happy that Carlos was fine and able to participate to the race after his huge crash yesterday. I would like also to say a big thank you to our mechanics who did a great job to rebuild the car with a new power unit that worked well in the race without any issues. Obviously we are disappointed with the final results but the performance of the car in normal conditions was good, which is a positive on a demanding circuit. Reliability was also there yet again here so we have to keep it in that sweet spot until the end of the season.”
