Fahrerstimmen – Tag 3

It feels crazy to have won the race today from P10, especially on a track like this where it’s very hard to pass. We made all the right calls today, there were some good undercuts and overall we did a great job today as a Team. This was definitely one of my best races, despite the little 360-degree spin! I’m very happy with the lead that we have, but of course we have to keep pushing and win more races.

Ich hatte zu Beginn des Rennens zu kämpfen und war mir nicht sicher, ob ich mich davon würde erholen können. Umso mehr freue ich mich darüber, dass ich mich danach von P7 nach vorne kämpfen konnte. Ich hatte einen guten Start, was entscheidend war, und nach und nach fühlte ich mich mit der Balance des Autos wohler. Die kühleren Temperaturen im Qualifying und im Rennen schienen uns gut zu bekommen. Wir haben im Vergleich zum Freitag einen großen Schritt gemacht, und dafür bin ich sehr dankbar. Wenn das DRS gestern funktioniert hätte, hätten wir um den Sieg mitfahren können. Ich möchte mich bei meinem Team bedanken, das in diesem schwierigen Jahr immer weiter gepusht und nie aufgegeben hat. Es ist etwas ganz Besonderes für uns, dass wir heute mit beiden Autos auf dem Podium standen, obwohl das Rennen für George unglücklich verlaufen ist. Es ist eine tolle Art, in die Pause zu gehen, weil wir wissen, dass wir den Rückstand verringern und mehr Performance haben. Hoffentlich können wir im zweiten Teil der Saison noch etwas mehr herausholen und damit beginnen, mit den Jungs an der Spitze zu kämpfen.

Ich hatte einen wirklich starken Start, und es war ein guter erster Stint. Wir sind in beiden Stints recht früh an die Box gekommen und haben versucht, die Reifen bis zum Ende zu schonen und gleichzeitig so viel wie möglich zu pushen. Gegen Ende des Stints auf den Medium-Reifen setzte Regen ein, weshalb ich zu kämpfen hatte und die Reifen an Temperatur verloren. Es war eine Herausforderung, mit den Reifen umzugehen. Es gibt also viel zu analysieren und zu sehen, was wir hätten besser machen können. Das Team hat fantastische Arbeit geleistet, gestern die Pole Position und heute ein Doppel-Podium. Wir machen Fortschritte, und ich bin stolz auf die Arbeit, die alle geleistet haben. Wir werden in der zweiten Saisonhälfte einen neuen Anlauf nehmen, uns neu fokussieren und versuchen, um einige Siege zu kämpfen.

It’s a shame we didn’t bring home a better result, because the car felt good and we had a strong pace on Medium tyres today. Unfortunately, the Hards just did not work in these conditions.
We now need to see what we could have done better, recharge our batteries over the break and be ready to fight in the second part of the season.

It is good to go into the summer break strongly. After qualifying it was looking like it could have been a poor weekend for us but we recovered some good points, and it was great fun to have the Mercedes and Ferraris racing up there with us. It was quite a tricky race, particularly towards the end, when the conditions changed and especially during the virtual safety car which meant everyone got cold tyres. Overall, we were a little unlucky with the VSC because we were potentially going to get Carlos and George and I felt we would have got a lot closer to them towards the end. I felt a lot stronger in the final stint and with a few more laps I think I could have been on the podium with Max. It was a great race though and very fun at times. It was a fantastic recovery for the Team today and it was great to see Max get the win.

Today was a tough day for the whole team. We expected to have a strong pace for the race, but it’s clear that with these lower temperatures and track conditions we were simply not fast enough to fight.
There are some things to look at and learn from today. We will regroup, analyse and come back stronger after the summer break.

P7, happy with that. After yesterday, of course we’d all wished for a bit more, but we just didn’t have the pace today with the quicker cars behind. We just did an extremely good job yesterday. I'm happy with it, it's the maximum we could do today with the cars ahead. Tough in places but seventh was the best we could have done for the points today, and we were ahead of our rivals.

It was hard racing today and we are pleased to come away with a double points finish. We managed to avoid cars at a busy Turn 1 on lap one and we lost some positions. After that, we concentrated mostly on our race pace and we wanted to make the one-stop strategy work on the Hard tyres. We didn’t have two Medium compounds to choose from for the race and instead we maximised our tyre choice for Saturday’s Qualifying. Our pace yesterday made us feel quite optimistic for today and we were anticipating a better result. All in all, we are still ahead of McLaren heading into the summer break, so it’s a strong team result. We just need to keep scoring points like we did today and hopefully this consistency will be our strength in the battle for fourth position in the Constructors.

We can be happy to score points with both cars today and that’s always a positive especially as we go into the season break. I don’t think we quite maximised our potential during the race and we’ll discuss as a team what we can do to improve. The one-stop was challenging today but we made it work to score points and I had to defend hard from Seb [Vettel] on the last lap. Overall, we’re still heading into the break in fourth in the Constructors’ Championship and we’ll be hungry to extend our lead in a few weeks’ time. I’m proud of the team for the improvements in performance over the last couple of months and we’ll aim to continue this upwards trajectory when the season returns after the well-deserved rest.

We had to fight hard for a point today and we came close to a second point when I was chasing down Esteban [Ocon] in the final laps. The team switched cars because I had a better opportunity to catch Esteban, but obviously the Virtual Safety Car hurt us and we ran out of time. I was very close on the final lap, but I needed just one more corner to make a move. Overall, it was a fun race with lots of fights and overtakes. The middle stint was a bit difficult, but the balance was better for the third stint on the Mediums. The race pace was competitive, once again, so improving our Saturday performance needs to be a focus for the second half of the year.

I think I drove a strong race today. Into the final stint, Sebastian was on the Medium and I was on the Soft – I did not have another Medium left, and he could make that tyre last a little bit longer. The Soft was the wrong tyre in the circumstances, sadly, but these things happen in racing. I had fun racing into the top 10. When I came up to pass Daniel [Ricciardo], I gave him room on the inside at Turn Two, but I think he was struggling for grip on the Hard tyre and went a bit too deep. That is how it goes sometimes. We seem to have better pace on Sundays than we do on Saturdays, so we need to look at that. But there are plenty of positives to take away from today.

I must say I’m happy with today. Starting from the pitlane is never easy and we managed to recover to 12th position. There were some changes made to the set-up of the car for the pitlane start, which showed a bit more pace and allowed us to make some good moves. The most important thing is that we use the upcoming three weeks to extract more from our package and finish inside the points consistently. I know the team and what we are capable of achieving, and with these new cars being difficult, we need time to understand how to get the best out of it.

Conditions today weren’t a threat per se, they were a bit mixed, especially a little more slippery on the last few laps, but overall okay. I think our plan today didn’t really pay off, we struggled on lap one and on the first few laps losing ground to other cars, and as going for one stop didn’t work out, we had to do an extra one which put me on the back of the field. It was quite frustrating, as it compromised my chances. Besides this, I think we had a strong pace today, and we deserved a little more, as in terms of performances we seemed to be back to where we were around Silverstone. I learned a lot so far this season, it’s been both tough and enjoyable, and there’s still much room for improvement. It feels good to have a little break now, and hopefully come back even stronger and push for better results.

It was again tougher than what we expected it to be. We hoped that the C2 compound would work and it didn’t, so in terms of strategy we maybe gambled on the wrong tire. We had a good start, that’s what we aim for, but unfortunately we couldn’t make it stick so it was P14 at the end. I think we have a lot to look back at, analyze and understand, so that for Spa we know how the new package works, what we need in terms of set-up and what we need to be quick. I expect this package to work pretty well in Spa and if that’s the case, we’ll know then for sure.

Unfortunately, there were more lows than highs. The launch felt good but then I dropped a bit after that and I was almost middle braking into Turn One. I felt like I was in a decent spot but I remember an Alpine coming up high on the exit of Turn One and I ran out of room, so I had to get out of that, otherwise I was going to lose a wing. I lost momentum through Two and got done around the outside of Turn Two as well. So, it was a bit of a mess on the first lap. Then the Soft really fell apart and I didn’t have anything on that tyre. The Medium, it was a little bit better.  I was able to make a nice double-move on the Alpines, which was fun. I managed to hold off Stroll for a bit on the Medium and then, when we came out on the Hard, and he came out on a Soft, we simply had no grip. I tried to avoid contact but I couldn’t and unfortunately hit him, spun him around and got a penalty and then that was it. The Hard didn’t work for us, I could just never really get it working. I'm looking forward to the break, of course, and will try to come back with a little more speed in the second half of the year.

Our race was compromised massively by having to pit for the black and orange flag. I had slight contact at the start with one of the McLaren’s – I couldn’t avoid it – and it wasn’t that bad, so I was surprised to get the flag. Then later we couldn’t really switch the hard tire on, so it was good to get off that and do some laps on the medium compound. It was positive from the perspective that we could put the car on track and immediately measure what we were hoping for. It’s just going to be a lot of work to get the lap time out of it and that’s going to come over the next few races – it’s new potential to be unlocked.

The race was okay. We were a bit out of sequence with the early damage and there was a lot of tyre degradation and pitstops, which didn’t make it easy. It’s been a tricky weekend for us, but it has been a good learning weekend, continuing to understand the strengths and the weaknesses of the new package. Looking back at the season so far, personally I’m happy,” said our Thair race, reflecting on his 2022. “It’s gone well and better than I expected, and I go into the summer break pretty happy. Obviously, we’re not where we want to be positioning on circuits, but we’ve got time to reset now and we’ll come back stronger after the break.

It wasn't great as the damage set us back with much more tyre degradation than we were hoping for. The balance was very tricky with the wind, so we have to find a way to adjust that later in the season. Not the best way to go into the summer break, but we'll take the time to recharge and look to bounce back in Spa.

It’s been a really difficult day, it didn’t feel like I had much of a race. I struggled with the car throughout, as I had absolutely no grip at all out there. I was finding it so difficult to keep it on the track and made a small mistake which meant I spun. This weekend has not been an easy one, we need to go away and look at all the data to understand why the upgrades we have are not paying off in the way we thought they would. We’ll have a reset now over the summer break and then look to come back stronger for the second half of the season.

It was tricky again today, a bit like in France, as the hard tires didn’t build up as fast as I was hoping. We tried it, we thought that was going to be the best chance for us, but ultimately it wasn’t. We committed to a one-stop strategy, and it was hard to back out of it. On top of that, a few laps before the end I had to stop the car because of a technical issue, which was a shame. I just lost power, we do not know the details yet: obviously it’s unfortunate and we will investigate it with the team, but I still think points seemed quite unlikely. I am looking forward to enjoying the summer break now, to recharge and come back full of energy for the second half of the season.