Fahrerstimmen – Tag 3

It is of course disappointing for the team to lose the 1-2 but there are lots of positives to take away from today.

The car was feeling good, and we had much better pace than we expected. There were several cars that seemed similar in terms of performance but once we had got ahead, we were able to maintain that position. We committed to the two-stop strategy and covered those directly behind us. George was able to make the one-stop work and, although I got close to him in the final few laps, I was unable to get past in the dirty air.

I feel for George, and you don’t want to win a race through a disqualification, but we have been back in the fight for victories in the past few races. It is incredibly competitive now, so we will need to work hard to battle for wins more consistently. Nevertheless, we can go into the summer break with momentum and positivity.

I’m happy with the result. I think we managed the race very well and I don’t think we could have done much more today. We did a lot of things right and gave ourselves the best opportunities, but in the end, it wasn’t quite enough. It’s been a really good couple of weeks for myself and the whole team. We’ve scored a lot of points and made inroads again today into Red Bull’s lead at the top of the Constructors’ Championship. That’s a big positive going into the summer break. I think everyone’s looking forward to it – I know I am – and having a chance to relax before coming back stronger in the second half.

I cannot be too happy with today’s race, as we had expected to be on the same level as Mercedes. On the positive side we managed to keep the two Red Bulls and one McLaren behind us.I cannot be too happy with today’s race, as we had expected to be on the same level as Mercedes. On the positive side we managed to keep the two Red Bulls and one McLaren behind us.In terms of tyres and strategy, we had expected to see a lot more graining on the Hard, but they worked well, while we struggled more with the Medium. I thought we were stopping too early for the first stop, but with hindsight the Hard was a really good tyre and as we saw with George (Russell), the one-stop might have worked better, but in the end we did a good job to stay in front of Max (Verstappen).I had hoped for a better result going into the holidays, but that’s how it is and at least I know I got everything I could out of the car. 

All in all it was quite a positive day for me, considering we started at P11, and we finished in front of Lando who is my main rival in the Championship. I think we did everything right with the strategy today and I had a good clean start. I was in the DRS train and it was difficult to pass, but I think strategy wise we did everything that we could to the limit. It was tough to make it with two mediums and a hard tyre and we could potentially have taken more position if we started with the hard tyre, but I think we did a good job and maximised our result today. It wasn’t realistic to start P11 and fly to the front, so I am overall happy with our performance. We are looking forward to the summer break and having a bit of time to relax, but at the same time we are committed to being better and faster and are trying to find solutions as we go into the rest of the season. However, everyone has been doing a great job and will have a well deserved break. We had a great start to the season, our last few races have been a bit more difficult, but we have been pushing to find a solution how to do that. Next race is obviously my home race in Zandvoort. It will be a tough battle and it will be all about tyre management, but it will be great to be in front of my home crowd again.

A disappointing race today. I went off in Turn 1 and it cost me a good position, which was difficult to recover with the lack of overtaking opportunities. The pace of the car was good, and the team have done a great job so far this season. We’ll go into the break, reset, and come back stronger to fight at the front in Zandvoort next month.

It was a difficult race. We decided to start on a different strategy from everyone around us. The start and the first stint were very good, but unfortunately, I think we didn't have enough pace to make it work to our advantage.It was a difficult race. We decided to start on a different strategy from everyone around us. The start and the first stint were very good, but unfortunately, I think we didn't have enough pace to make it work to our advantage.It's been a challenging first half of the season for many different reasons, but I'm sure that after the summer break, we will come back stronger. Thank you, everyone, for your support. See you in Zandvoort.

Starting P2 and fighting for the top positions, the race was going well in the first stint and we managed to stay in the pack and had quite an intense fight with Lewis as well, we clipped wheels at the beginning. At some point in the second stint it went wrong with the medium tyre when everyone else was on hard tyres, we just didn’t have any pace and it was hard to push. We need to understand what went wrong as we changed a lot on the car but didn’t have the opportunity to try it on the dry as the conditions were so different from qualifying. We compromised a lot in the final stint, in the strategy we lost quite a bit of time unfortunately. We managed to set the fastest lap at the end, which was the maximum we could get today and more points in the bag. It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster for me recently, as a Team we need to re-group and take some time during the summer break to understand everything and hopefully we hit the ground running for the second half of the season. I’m looking forward to getting some time with my family over the break and getting back in to a good training routine and just really resetting. There is still a long championship ahead.

I am pleased with ninth position today and two points after a hard-fought race. We had a few different strategies planned for today. We extended the first stint on the Mediums and then on the Hard tyres we managed the pace quite well and had decent tyre degradation. We thought there might be a chance of a Safety Car and when there wasn’t we thought why not extend and remain on a one-stop strategy. This decision paid off and we managed to score some points. I am looking forward to a short break now and some time to recharge. We will continue fighting and we have some more work to do to improve for the second half of the season.

I’m pleased to have scored a point for the team this afternoon after some hard fights on track. We had good pace throughout, enough straight-line speed to overtake down the Kemmel Straight and in the end, it was enough for the top ten. There are positives, of course, like our general race pace and tyre management. I do think we could have finished maybe a position higher up had we executed things slightly differently, but that is up for us to review and improve. We made a good decision in focusing on race preparation and setting up the car suitably for that. I am staying in Spa for a few days for the Pirelli tyre test before the summer break.

Today was very similar to yesterday; I’m quite pleased as I feel like we had a really strong two-stop race, but unfortunately so did some others and I think they had a bit more pace than us, so it wasn’t good enough to get rewarded. Esteban (Ocon) was generally a bit quicker and also had fresher tyres, so I’m disappointed with our final result, as we tried our best to keep the tenth place in the last few laps. It was a positive weekend and I’m leaving Spa content and fulfilled, which pleases me entering the summer break. Looking ahead after the break, I’m excited to get back to Zandvoort and we’ll keep the momentum going from the last few races.

It became clear during the race that the tyre degradation was lower than expected, so we elected to go for the one-stop strategy. We were running in P10 a few laps from the end of the race, but by that point I was struggling with the tyres and didn’t have the speed to hold position. We were missing the pace we needed to fight for more today. As a team, I think we still have a lot of work to do to do catch back up to the top four teams.

I had a good start today but ultimately; we just didn’t have the pace. I think we executed the race as well as we could but at the end of the day, you need pace to get points and we just didn’t have it. It would’ve been better if we had two sets of Hard tyres for the race but unfortunately, we didn’t, so I’m not sure if that would’ve changed things. We haven’t had any upgrades all year, so I think we’re just falling behind the pack too much, which makes things difficult. We’ve got some coming after the summer break, so hopefully, we can return more competitive.

It was not a good race today in Spa. It was tough to fight with cars around us as we lacked straight line speed and we had to manage some temperature issues amongst other things. I feel like we missed a trick with our strategy today – as did other cars – with the one-stop clearly possible. These are things we must review as I know we can do a lot better as a team. In recent weeks we have not been good enough and we must do better when we return to racing after the summer break. It’s been a tough first part of the season for us but I’m pleased with some of the things we are bringing to the car. We must keep finding further improvements to the car and come back hungrier to do better.

I think we had a decent race, we just didn’t have the pace to fight further up today. We took what we could and did a one-stop, which was fine. I can’t say we did anything wrong, we just weren’t fast enough. We thought this track was going to be good for us, but we’ve been surprised many times, and this is the worst race we’ve had in a while. I’m looking forward to the summer break – everyone is – and then looking forward to some races where we’ll score some more points.

We gave it a good try today, attempting something different with the strategy, even if it eventually didn’t pay off; we could have probably stayed out and, even if we could have finished a couple of places higher than sixteenth, it most likely still wouldn’t have brought us a point finish anyway. As a positive, it felt like we were in a slightly better position in terms of race pace against our main competitors, although it was still not enough for the top ten – which is why we must keep bringing upgrades and progressing in every area. Now, a well-deserved summer break awaits the team; it’s been a challenging first half of the season, so we’ll be looking to refill our tanks and come back strongly in Zandvoort at the end of August.

We’ve been struggling for pace this weekend and also during the race today. I haven’t been feeling fully comfortable and it seems there was something going on from what I heard from my engineers after the race, so we’ll sit down together and look through the data. The strategy didn’t work out for us today, but we always knew it would be challenging given our starting position. We’ll keep pushing as a team and do as much as we can to maintain our position in the constructors as it remains a tight midfield.

It wasn’t great today. I feel like the Hard tyres were solid and I was happy with the pace, but the first two Medium stints were pretty tricky and it wasn’t easy to drive. In my second Medium stint, I was trying to hold people up behind, which was ultimately helping Alex ahead, so I was trying to do my best in that sense. I think things could have looked a little different if we had a dry Qualifying, but now we will use the summer to reset.

We had no pace, no harmony, no rhythm. I just didn’t get off on the right foot with the car all weekend and we didn’t manage to find a sweet spot across the sessions, and we need to look a little into why, but also forget this weekend and go again after the summer break. Kevin looked a bit better and pulled off the one-stop which was decent. Overall, we need to look into our low-downforce performance.

It is heartbreaking to be disqualified from today’s race. It had been an unbelievable Grand Prix for us to make the one-stop strategy work. In what turned out to be my final stint, the tyres just kept getting better and better. I was nursing them in the early stages and as we went further, I became more and more convinced we could get to the end on them. It was a risk worth taking and it looked like it had paid off.

Despite the disqualification, I am of course proud to have crossed the line first. It is also good that the team was still able to take the victory with Lewis. He drove a great race and was the fastest car out there on the two-stop strategy. Whilst I’m incredibly disappointed, I know we will bounce back stronger after the summer break, starting in Zandvoort.

Today’s race marks a disappointing end to the first half of the season. The day had started quite well for us: we opted for the hard compound, the pace and overall car balance felt good, and I was able to gain positions. I was close to the two Haas cars in front of me before experiencing a loss of power, followed by a loss of brakes, which ended my race. I reckon we had potential today; starting on the hard tyre gave us some strategic options, making this outcome even more disappointing for the entire team. Now, we’ll head into the summer break to recharge and come back refreshed. I hope Zandvoort – where I’ll run the same upgraded car that Valtteri has been running in the last two events – will be the turning point for us as a team.