AlphaTauri
Pierre Gasly
"I'm really happy today because yesterday was pretty difficult for us. I didn't feel so good with the car as we didn't manage to get the balance where we wanted. We know that on Sundays we usually have a bit more pace to fight and be in the mix for points, and today it was good fun. I had a lot of battles on track – attacking, defending…all sorts of situations and I must say I really enjoyed it out there! The team took all the right decisions in the right moments, so I think we can all be very pleased with sixth position today."
Daniil Kvyat
"Not a good one today, my race was pretty much ruined from the moment I had contact with Albon. I don't know what he wanted to do but as a result, I lost my front wing and the car was massively damaged on the floor and brake ducts. I lost so much time doing that slow lap to the pits without a front wing, then the pit stop was obviously slow to replace it, so there wasn't much I could do afterwards. The car was missing a lot of downforce, so I struggled for the rest of the race. I was just hoping for some rain or something to happen to be able to catch up, but nothing happened. It's a shame because until that incident with Albon it really looked like it could have been a very strong race, I think we could have done well today."
Jonathan Eddolls, chief race engineer
"Overall as a team, we've had a really good result today. It was a challenging race as, like all the others, we headed into Sunday with very little information on tyre performance. Daniil was very unlucky when he came together with Albon which caused him to lose his front wing, especially because at that time we really had strong pace. That meant his race was pretty much over, as it did a lot of damage to the floor and other parts of the car. On the other side of the garage, Pierre drove a really good race, he managed the tyres well and gave us excellent feedback, allowing us to plan a good strategy. We reacted well to the late Safety Car, pitting Pierre while Leclerc in front didn't pit, so with fresher tyres we were able to attack him and finish ahead in P6. Today we scored more points than our main competitors, which allows us to close the gap in the fight for sixth position in the Constructors' Championship."
Franz Tost, team principal
"This race weekend was under quite difficult circumstances because of the weather conditions. As we weren't able to run on Friday, it wasn't an easy exercise for the engineers to find the correct setup, and that's maybe why we suffered a bit on Saturday during Qualifying, finishing only 12th and 13th. For today's race, we decided to put both drivers on the Prime tyre at the start, which meant the first laps were a bit tricky for them until the tyres reached a good temperature. However, they were both able to catch up and put in some really good lap times. Unfortunately, Daniil was involved in an incident with Alex Albon where he lost his front wing. The car was heavily damaged, especially on the floor, so Daniil could not keep the same performance level he showed before the collision and his race was heavily compromised.
"As for Pierre, he had a very good race. We called him in on lap 29 for the Base tyre because we thought we could make the one-stop strategy work. However, when the Safety Car was deployed on lap 44, we decided to bring him in again to change him to the Option tyre, on which he did a really good job chasing Sainz in the last 15 laps and finishing just a few tenths behind him in sixth position. The pit stops were good today and we made the right strategic decisions, so well done to the team. I think this was the best we could have extracted from the package today, and we closed the gap a bit to sixth position in the Constructors' Championship, so we are positive for the future. We're looking forward to continuing our good form in Portimao."
