Team Talk: A chaotic Saturday in Baku City

Cadillac 

Sergio Perez, 14th

“It's been one of my strongest weekends here in Baku, in terms of performance - I'm pleased with the way I've driven. We were fighting cars that were one or two seconds faster than us, due to the overtake mode, and we were able to stay with them in the first stint. The way I felt like I was running, if anything went wrong at any corner, I would have put it in the wall, so when you do a race like this you feel really proud. In that regard it was a positive weekend, a good step. We just lack in pace and straight-line speed, we are too draggy on the straights, so then we fall back. We need half a second or a second to stay with them - I'm a bit of a sitting duck on the straights.

"We stay optimistic for the coming weekends, hopefully we can continue to be stronger. We don't have any big upgrades coming in so I guess it's going to be a tough end of the season, but we will keep on it. Operationally, I'm pushing to get the maximum out of the weekends and I think we are heading in that direction, improving each time, but we just have to keep pushing a lot more as a team and things will come.”

Valtteri Bottas, DNF

“Today was a long and difficult day. We didn’t have the pace and I was only able to fight with Fernando [Alonso] which cost us some time. At the end of the race, I had a lock-up into Turn 1 and went wide, so I think the systems got somewhat confused because of the extra distance I’d driven. Then I suffered a huge super clip into Turn 15 and when I hit the brakes, only the front worked and it felt as if the rears weren’t harvesting anymore. Otherwise, we were pretty far off so we have plenty to analyse ahead of next week as it was a bit of a strange one.”

Marcin Budkowski, Team Principal

“It took a while for the race here in Baku to come alive but when it did it was a really interesting race. On our side we are a little bit disappointed after qualifying yesterday and today’s race but the fact that we are a bit disappointed is a good sign. We spent most of the race fighting with other cars - especially Checo who had a really strong weekend having good battles with our rivals. It was a real shame for Valtteri not to see the chequered flag after a long race - we will need to investigate that technical issue and get on top of it. We can take encouragement from Baku as extra motivation going into Malaysia next weekend.”