Team Talk – Sunday in Singapore

Alpine

Pierre Gasly

“Today was always going to be difficult especially with the Pit Lane start. I have not been feeling too comfortable in the car recently so we changed set-up and changed floor to try and understand some things further which should benefit us for the future. We knew the race would be complicated and it was nice to have a few battles out there even if it was not for the points paying positions.

I know the team is working exceptionally hard at the moment and we all know we are nowhere near where we should be right now. I am confident we can do better in Austin next time out compared to the last few races where the circuit characteristics have not suited our package especially with the lack of grip and bumps that are common on street circuits. We will continue to keep our heads down and keep focusing on improving our current position.”

Franco Colapinto

“It was a long race with lots of close battles out there, which was fun but, ultimately, we didn't have the pace and lost some places towards the end on older tyres. I managed to get a good launch off the line and made up places through the opening sequence of corners. We were running quite well in the midfield pack on the Softs at the time and knowing how difficult it is to overtake at this track, we pitted early trying to undercut and use track position to make up places.

We tried our best to manage the tyres but with a lot of degradation and having to also move offline for blue flags, it made it difficult to hold off the cars on fresher tyres in the closing laps. It was not what we wanted but we just have to keep pushing and better results will come. I'm looking forward to the next leg of the season in the Americas, which is one of my favourites with incredibly passionate fans.”

Steve Nielsen, Managing Director

“It has been another tough race for us but we can take some positives from it in the respect we managed to take a bit of a fight to our competitors. Franco had a good start to gain some places on the opening lap and we went aggressive quite early on strategy with an undercut on the cars ahead which required Franco to manage a long stint on Mediums. It had looked promising but he tailed off at the end with the tyres degrading.

For Pierre, we opted to change set-up on his car and change his floor, which meant a Pit Lane start. That put him on the backfoot early on but he did a good opening stint to be in that midfield mix which was held up by a train of traffic. After his Hards faded we opted for some laps on Soft at the end where he closed the gap to cars ahead and had the benefit of some low fuel, high grip running.

Of course, it is not the end result we ever set out to achieve but there are plenty of positives to take from the entire weekend and we head to Austin feeling more optimistic in our ability to perform on a much more conventional circuit. We can be confident that better days are coming and I am pleased to see the continued work ethic that everyone in this team is applying in a difficult time. Finally, congratulations to McLaren on setting an extremely high bar with their second Championship win in a row.”