AlphaTauri
Liam Lawson
"We didn't have the performance in the long run today and didn't quite have the speed of the Alpines ahead. The team and I worked hard this weekend to maximise the sessions, and we made steps in each one. The fight with Yuki was aggressive, but I think it was a fair race. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough, and I think neither of us had the pace to make the top 10. I'm still trying to score points for the team and prove myself every time I get in the car, and I think I did that today."
Yuki Tsunoda
"It's frustrating because there was pace today, but I didn't have the opportunity to maximise it. On this track, it's hard to follow because the tyres overheat very easily and I feel like we pitted for the hard compound too late, so I was behind everyone and had to catch up to the pack. I think there was no chance to catch P10 today. It's a shame that I wasn't able to perform well and get a good result in front of the Japanese fans, but I got a lot of energy from them so thank you to all the fans. In the end, it is what it is."
Jonathan Eddolls, chief race engineer
"Having saved only one medium and one hard tyre set for the race, we knew that with these track temperatures, we would be at a slight disadvantage to those cars around who had two hard compound tyres left. Equally, we had expected the medium tyres to behave similarly to the hard compound. It was always going to be a race about tyres. We started both cars on the soft compound, and after the incidents at the start, both our cars emerged in P9 and P10. The stint on the soft tyres was short, and we reacted to Hulkenberg. With good in laps from the drivers and great pitstops, we kept both our cars ahead. Our main issue was the pace of the medium compound in the middle stint. We had high degradation, and this was where the damage was done. This will be the main focus of the post-race work, as other teams were able to make it work. Our pace on the hard compound at the end was competitive, but by this stage, we had already lost out to the two Alpines, ending up with both cars just outside the points. Although we lost some positions in the race, there are some positive signs from the weekend. The package is working as demonstrated by the good qualifying performance and the pace in the race, which has taken a step forward compared to before. We are continuing to develop the car, and we're so close to being able to score points on merit, so we'll keep fighting to the end of the season."
