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Daniel Ricciardo
“We didn’t get points today but I feel much better than yesterday and I’m more pleased with how the day went. I was frustrated after qualifying as it didn’t help starting from the back, but today I was able to put together a better race, as I really felt we had a strong showing. We were in that kind of midfield battle, and I think the cars in front of us were a bit faster, especially Pierre (Gasly), so we probably couldn’t do much more. I’m happy with the bigger picture of the race; in terms of pace we pushed during the times we had, catching Lance (Stroll) and Nico (Hulkenberg) towards the end of the race. Hopefully, in Monza, we’ll be even more okay putting it all together from start to finish, and qualify better to have an easier Sunday.”
Yuki Tsunoda
“We split the strategy across the garage, but this time it didn’t work, especially on my side. We knew that it was going to be 50:50 with 2 stops, but the lap we pitted was too late and the timing was wrong. Using the soft tyre and losing a position at the start was unideal for sure, and then I was just stuck in traffic and always behind dirty air. I finished the race way behind where I started, which was pretty frustrating. We certainly could have done better as a team, but we can learn from it, improve and work on things for the future.”
Jody Egginton, technical director
“We have a lot to review from this weekend. Yuki's strategy did not pan out as we wanted and this made his race difficult for him. Daniel’s race pace was reasonable and he was able to fight with the cars around him. However, today's race has confirmed that there is now next to no delta in race pace between the teams towards the front of the midfield. As well as delivering our planned aero developments, we need to be focused on extracting more from our cars in qualifying and in the first laps of the race, as both of these aspects of the weekend are critical in maximising opportunities in the last phase of the race. With Monza next week, we will be focused on addressing the key points from this weekend in order to be as well prepared as possible to extract everything possible.”
Laurent Mekies, team principal
“Of course we wanted to start the second part of the season with a better performance than today’s. From qualifying onwards, it became clear that we were missing some performance compared to our nearest competitors and dropping your relative performance by just a tenth or so is the difference between fighting in the top 10 or not. We tried a few things in the race to make up some positions and took a bit of a risk by putting Yuki on a two-stop race, but it clearly did not work and he was stuck in traffic for most of the race. Daniel had a good go at staying with the Astons in front all race long and drove a strong, consistent race, but this was not enough to get points today. It was not the smoothest weekend for us but one that we will certainly learn from as a Team, and we will come back stronger. Overall, we are well aware that we need to bring more speed to our car in order to keep fighting at the front of the ultra tight midfield and everyone is absolutely flat out in Faenza and in Bicester to bring more developments to the car soon.”
