Fahrerstimmen – Tag 3

It has been a good weekend in Brazil. It was a great race and we had good all-round pace throughout. Again, it was a really long stint on the tyres and it was important to save them throughout as we had high tyre degradation. Lando had a good race and I had to work to defend in the first lap and maintain the gap. He was close to me in stint one and pushed a bit harder on the newer compounds at the start but I stayed calm throughout the race, just relaxed and let the car roll into the corner. He did well and we had some good racing today. It has been quite a long triple header so looking forward to a few days break before preparing for Vegas. I am enjoying the moment and hopefully we can continue this success until the end of the year.

It was good fun today. My initial start was good but the second phase of the launch was maybe a little bit on the safe side. These are things to improve for tomorrow but nevertheless the pace was strong as we got into the race. I tried to go after Max – but just didn't have enough. I’m encouraged with how good our pace was today. We didn’t expect to be fighting Max at a track which doesn’t suit our car as much, so overall I'm pleased with my performance today. Tomorrow I’ll try to work my way through the field again and work hard to secure good points for the team.

For the last 30 laps, it felt like I had pressure from Sergio [Pérez]. But when he passed me two laps from the end, I thought the chance of a podium finish was no longer possible. Then he braked a bit late into Turn One on the final lap, and I said to myself I would go for it into Turn Four. This is a phenomenal result for the whole team. We’d been struggling a little in recent races – especially the last two events – so this podium is for everyone at the track and everyone back at Silverstone. It shows that we will always keep fighting until the very last lap, the last corner.

Let’s start from the beginning, it took me a while to get through the Mercedes and that damaged my race, after that we were always a bit on the back foot with Fernando. We were chipping away at him and towards the end we came really close to the podium. I have to say well done to Fernando because it was a great fight and really fair racing. Between us, whoever got the podium, it was well deserved, and he got it. I had the opportunity and went for it but he was really fast on the straights and I don’t think I could have done anything differently in the final few laps. I think that pace has been there for the last few weekends, but we haven’t been able to put it all together, it was a matter of time before it came. It was a good weekend for us in Championship, because we are getting closer to securing second spot, now we go to Vegas.

Neither of my starts were great – I had a lot of wheelspin and very little traction, so I didn’t get off the line well. But after that we had a lot of pace – quicker than Ferrari, quicker than Mercedes – and it felt like we were back to where we were at the beginning of the year. Today’s result gives us the belief that we can go out and fight for points in these final two races. Finally, a big shout out to the whole team – the last few races have been tough but today is a real reward and sends us home with smiles on our faces after three weeks on the road. I’m looking forward to Vegas!

It was a difficult day. The starts were not good due to a clutch problem that we also had yesterday and we lost some positions there.
From there on, I was able to pass both Mercedes on track, but that was it. Unfortunately, today Aston Martin, Red Bull and McLaren were faster than us and P6 was the maximum.
It is a big shame that Charles didn't have the chance to start the race as we could have scored very important points against Mercedes here in Brazil.
Now it’s time to recharge our batteries and hopefully we will be back in good form in Las Vegas.

I’m very happy with today’s race and I would say it was one of our best performances of the season. It was a very challenging race to manage with multiple stints and pit-stops, but the entire team did a great job today to make the right calls and execute the stops well. For the team, in seventh and tenth, it’s clearly a strong performance, especially after starting from near the back of the grid. We competed with Carlos [Sainz] and the two Mercedes throughout, so that is clearly a good step forwards from yesterday. Next up is Las Vegas, which will no doubt be a cool experience. I’m excited for it, as I always am for new races, and it is up to us to enter that race as prepared as possible and give it our all on-track.

I feel like I drove a better race today than I did yesterday, in relation to how I was managing the tyres to the best of my ability. It’s difficult to say why we struggled so much this weekend. There are moments with this car when it works and others when it doesn’t. It’s very inconsistent throughout the lap and we need to figure that out. Today, we were slow on the straights but still sliding through the corners, so it was difficult. We will go away and look at things to find out what we should have done differently. It was a day to forget but hopefully there are lots of learnings from it too. I am also so proud of everyone in the team. They are still working as hard as they can and holding their heads up high. That’s what we have to continue to do and we will keep pushing to improve.

Good job to the team! I’m happy for scoring points, but I definitely could’ve done more. I made a mistake in Turn 10, which caused me to lose one position, so I’m really sorry to the team. I think more was possible, especially as we were managing some reliability issues that we’ll look into. It’s such a shame about Daniel as well because he was also really fast. I think we both could’ve scored points today. Looking at the positive, starting P16 and ending up P9 shows the strong pace of the car and that we’ve definitely made a big step in the last races since we introduced the upgrades in Austin. We’re in a good rhythm now, scoring consecutive points in three weeks, and it’s important to keep that momentum for the last two races of the season. We’ll keep extracting performance from the car and aim to continue scoring points, to close the gap to Williams who are ahead of us in the Constructors’ Championship.

Today we had a small reward with one point after a challenging race. We had a great start, gaining some positions while also avoiding the chaos in front. Unfortunately, we saw very quickly that we had very high degradation throughout and had to go for a three-stop race. We had planned for this as we saw some signs yesterday that this could be a factor, so that is something we will assess going forward. Nevertheless, a good day in the office for the team with both cars in the points and a good step since yesterday’s performance in the Sprint Race. Our focus now shifts to Las Vegas, the penultimate race of the season, which promises to be a spectacular experience where we hope to deliver another strong result.

A tricky one; we just missed pace today and didn’t have what we needed to fight with Alpha Tauri. We really wanted to capitalise on a lot of cars going out, but we struggled with tyre degradation and were not quick enough. Other than that, I’m happy to have kept it clean and get 70 laps in. Another well rounded Sunday and, especially on low fuel I’ve had the pace I needed this weekend, so we need to have a bit of a regroup and carry that forward to Vegas. Another home race for me coming up next, so I’m excited.

It was a typical start situation where it got too tight there, and it was very similar to what happened to me in the Sprint in Qatar, I got sandwiched. You can’t really bail out at that point, so I made contact with Albon which then put him into Kevin. It was unfortunate but there wasn’t much we could do. There was damage but the red flag allowed us to repair it, so the car was fine, there was just no performance this weekend.

It was a messy race start. I saw quite a big crash in front of me, and there was a lot of debris. I felt like I was getting through it, but at a certain point, I saw a tyre flying in the air, like a frisbee, which was starting to get closer. I checked my mirrors and saw the tyre had hit and damaged my rear wing. Due to the red flag, we returned to the pits, where the team did a great job in repairing the car to be ready to restart the race. Unfortunately, I was told that Oscar (Piastri) and I would be a lap down and had to restart from the pitlane. All the frustration was because we were really fast today. We stayed behind Yuki, helping him score points, but when we had clear air, I felt like the pace I showed was very strong. I think we made some good progress throughout this weekend, and I’m happy with that seeing as it's a track that has never been a strong one for me. I believe I could've contributed quite a lot to the team in scoring points today if only we didn't restart the race one lap down. I'm now looking forward to Las Vegas.

P10 today, there was some good racing out there but I struggled with tyre degradation from all the battling. Other than that, it was a fun race around a good circuit. We managed to get some important learning done ahead of tomorrow which will certainly help us in the Grand Prix. We’ll work to see what we can do in the race and hope to score positive points.

I had a great start; I think it was one of the strongest starts on the grid but after looking at the external cameras, the driver on the inside was a bit blindsided by the two cars on the right, so there wasn’t much I could do. With all the retired cars throughout the race and many out of place with damage from the crash, we really could’ve been on for points, so it’s disappointing when the championship fight is so tight. Today obviously wasn’t our day so we’ll look ahead to Vegas and try maximise where we can.

It’s been a disappointing day on my side. Starting from P2, we were hoping to bring home plenty of points to move up in the championship fight, but unfortunately, we had to retire early.
Coming into turn 6 on the formation lap, I lost my power steering and the wheel went stiff, also locking up the rears. 
I’m focused on the last two races of the season now, we won’t give up and will fight to finish with the best constructors’ classification result we can achieve. I will give it everything in Las Vegas.

We obviously got something very wrong this weekend. We’re not sure what that was yet but the pace just hasn’t been there. You clearly don’t go from a podium-worthy car to one that is one second off the front, so it’s been very strange. We thought yesterday may have been a one off, but it clearly wasn’t. We were sliding the tyres and I think the performance we showed was the maximum we had with the car the way it was. In the end, we were suffering from high oil temperatures in the Power Unit and that caused us to retire. That topped off what was a difficult day. We need to now get back to the factory, regroup, and work through what we did to get on top of it before the final two races of the season.

We had a good chance to score points with both cars today, Valtteri and I working together to finish in the top ten, so it’s extremely frustrating to finish the race like this. We had good pace and we were making progress from the back, but we had a technical issue and had to stop the car. I don’t know the details yet, we will need to investigate the problem fully to understand what happened, but we had to stop to prevent any worse issues to appear. It’s sad, but it’s motorsport: now we need to focus on Las Vegas, and work to make sure we can be as competitive there as we were today.

I got a really good start and then I think Albon squeezed Nico, they had contact, and that sent Albon into me like a chain reaction. It is what it is, you’ve got to move on to the next race, and the next race is Las Vegas. I look forward to that.

Our pace felt pretty good today, a definite improvement from the rest of the weekend: we adapted well to the  cooler temperatures, and we were in the mix to bring home some points. I had managed to avoid all the debris from the turn one collision at the first start but, unfortunately, we eventually had to retire the car. We still need to investigate the technical issue that caused it, but the frustration remains. It was a real shame, as we actually had the chance to build something really promising today. The weekend overall has been a tough one for us; with only two rounds to go, things look pretty difficult for our side: still, we won’t give up, and we will keep working hard to try and make up for the positions lost in the final two rounds of the Championship.