Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsRed Bull Racing

Kvyat caught out by Force India 'undercut' pit call

Red Bull Racing's Daniil Kvyat worked hard in Brazil, but still ended up losing a position during the race even though he felt that he had achieved the best result possible on the day.

The young Russian started the race from sixth place on the grid and was able to get the jump on Force India's Nico Hulkenberg, but was himself caught out on lap one by a fast-starting Valtteri Bottas.

Intent on winning the lost position back from the Williams, Kvyat left himself open to a clever strategy call from Force India that allowed Hulkenberg to pit early and undercut him during the first round of pit stops, after which Kvyat has little opportunity to fight back.

"We were building some gap with Force India behind us," Kvyat explained. "They boxed, and we were at the time trying to close the gap on Williams so we decided to focus on Williams and Force India kind of got in front.

"We were undercut by Force India in the first pit stop which was a bit unfortunate, compromised our race quite badly," he admitted. "The undercut here is quite powerful, so yes - they just did the right time.

"Shame, but six points is better than nothing for sure," he said. "We still can say that we have done plus or minus a couple of points the maximum today.

"It wasn't an easy race, I've been following all the time. It was quite hard to pass, to find a place to overtake, but yeah - we have to be happy with those six points."

Taking the weekend as a whole, Kvyat was happy with the growing sense of confidence both within himself and the team as a whole.

"Every weekend we have more confidence in our group on our side of the garage, so very happy," he said. "All-in-all very controlled qualifying yesterday, very controlled race today, couldn't have been much better."

But the Achilles heel for Red Bull remains the same as it's been all year long: the power unit, with a new ungraded specification in use this weekend for his team mate Daniel Ricciardo seemingly offering little in the way of improvement from the older version.

"What hoods us back and what we are missing is a bit of horsepower. [With that], we will be awesome."

REPORT: Rosberg keeps Hamilton at bay to win in Brazil

AS IT HAPPENED: Brazilian Grand Prix

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.