AlphaTauri
Pierre Gasly
"I'm obviously very disappointed right now because we've had a very strong weekend since we arrived. Starting from P5 I was hoping for some good points today, but my race was pretty much over after the contact with Daniel in lap one. I broke the front wing, I had floor damage and I was obviously very far behind after just one lap, so my race was almost finished from there. It's a big shame because we've shown some good pace all weekend and we haven't managed to get the rewards of that today, but I think there are still quite a lot of positives to take-away from this weekend and that's what we'll look at for Imola."
Yuki Tsunoda
"I'm happy I managed to score points in my first Grand Prix – I think this race showed how great the performance of the car is. I have to say, I'm a bit disappointed still as I lost a few positions on the first lap – due to being too cautious – and had to work throughout the race to recover these. I've learnt a lot here in Bahrain, which is really positive, and I will take this with me to Imola. I had some strong overtakes during the race and, for me, overtaking Fernando was quite an emotional experience, he's a Formula 1 superstar that I've grown up watching, so that was pretty exciting. I'm really proud of my performance and I'm looking forward to seeing how we do next time out."
Jody Egginton, technical director
"We were fairly happy with the performance of both car's this morning – having dealt with the problem on Yuki's car overnight – and both drivers seemed happy with their cars during FP3. Qualifying takes place during cooler track conditions here in Bahrain, but both cars performed well in Q1. Yuki and Pierre completed strong laps on the soft tyre, so we decided to optimise the race-start sets, by having both cars on to the medium compound for Q2. Pierre made that work – he was one of four drivers to get through to Q3 on the mediums – however, Yuki wasn't able to extract the best from the tyre in the second session. He's put in a really good performance already this weekend, so I'm really pleased with that. Pierre had two strong runs on the soft tyre in Q3 and is starting in a good place tomorrow to pick up some great points. I'm really looking forward to the race now."
Jonathan Eddolls, chief race engineer
"I'm excited to be back on track racing again - we were obviously here testing a few weeks ago but it feels completely different being here in Bahrain for a race weekend. Due to each session only lasting an hour this season, we had a full runplan to get through. It's difficult to learn a lot from FP1 here, due to the high track temperatures being drastically different to those that we'll experience in qualifying and the race, so we focused on some aero understanding during that session. FP2 followed a normal plan – with a medium tyre run, followed by the softer compound. Both drivers put in good laps on the performance runs, which was extremely positive in more representative conditions this evening. The longer runs we completed will allow us to confirm that the data gathered during testing here is relevant for the race weekend. Unfortunately, we saw something we weren't comfortable with in the data on Yuki's car, so we called him in as a precaution, however this was just a few minutes before the end of the session so had no impact on our running. Overall, I think we had a really positive day today and I'm looking forward to qualifying tomorrow."
Franz Tost, team principal
"After a satisfying qualifying session yesterday, Pierre started on the grid today in fifth position and Yuki in 13th. The start of the race was good, with Pierre coming back in the first lap to keep his fifth position. Yuki had a reasonable start too, but then he was passed by a few other drivers - behind Ocon he then had to brake quite hard, causing a flat-spot on the front right tyre which meant he started feeling some vibrations. After the safety car, Pierre had a collision which caused damage to his front wing, coming down to corner five, therefore we had to pit him to change it – which of course took some time. Maybe the softer compound would have prevented the accident, as the grip on the mediums after the safety car was quite low. From then onwards, Pierre's race was compromised as he also had damage to the floor, which meant quite a big loss of performance. Nevertheless, in his last stint he showed some fantastic lap times and was really one of the fastest out there. Unfortunately, we had to retire him towards the end of the race for a suspected gearbox issue that we need to investigate further. At the end, he couldn't score any points, but he did a fantastic job in qualifying yesterday and he showed the race pace was there today – he was just unlucky. Yuki had his first race in F1 and I must say he really did a fantastic job. We told him his aim was to come back from the first lap with a healthy car to be able to run his race, and that's exactly what he achieved. He showed a lot of good overtaking maneuverers – I believe he was the car that completed the most overtakes – and his lap times were also very competitive, with the medium tyre as well as with the hard compound. He deserved ninth position and it was really nice to see how he fought against Kimi, Lance and others - I think we can look forward to the season ahead with him. He is the first Japanese driver to score points in the debut race, and it's great he achieved this result with us. I'd like to say a big thank you to everyone at Honda for putting in so much work over the winter months to provide us with such a competitive PU, essential to our performance. Even if I expected a better result this weekend and today we couldn't get it together in the way we should've done, having a really strong package makes us look forward to Imola now."
