22/10/2017
NEWS STORY
Daniil Kvyat: "My best race of the season for sure! I'm very happy about the result and I did everything I could to bring the points home. I really enjoyed myself, it was a very clean and enjoyable race and overall a good job by the team. We kept it together with limited running and we still managed to get into the points. It's a pity I couldn't defend from Massa, but I had less grip with my soft tyre and we had some energy deployment issues so my straight-line speed was down. I came here with a fresh mindset, we shuffled some things in the team to give everyone some new motivation and some new focuses. Everything has been working fantastically this weekend and the race was just great."
Brendon Hartley: "It was tough out there, but it's been an awesome debut Grand Prix! It's all starting to sink in now and it won't be until I go to bed tonight and put my eyes at rest that I'll start to process everything... I didn't do the best of standing starts, but it's been a long time since I did one of those! After that, I was in many battles and I'm satisfied with my race – the pace was pretty strong, especially at the end. I think the only small mistake I made was getting overtaken by Stroll a quarter into the race, as I couldn't pass him back and he held me up a bit. So there's been lots of challenges, lots of things to learn and I hope I get another shot at it to put all these experiences into practice! I've enjoyed every single moment of this race weekend and I'd like to thank the whole team for this, it's been amazing!"
Jody Egginton (Head of Vehicle Performance): "Today's race was one of mixed emotions: on the positive side, we have scored a point with Daniil and Brendon has had a solid debut Grand Prix. On the flip side, unfortunately both Williams and Renault have taken points off us in the Constructors Championship. In terms of the race itself, the strategies for both cars panned out pretty much as predicted. We expected some traffic for Brendon and, as such, we were ready to move stop laps to get him into free air if possible. However, after doing this to avoid a time loss with Ericsson, we were a little bit more restricted in what we could do to jump Stroll, so we were not able to do so. Once this said, Brendon should be pleased with his race, as he has performed consistently and delivered on everything we asked of him and for sure he picked up further useful experience and understanding of our car... well done to him! Daniil's race was spent in a close battle with Massa, Sainz and both Force Indias. He was running 9th until the last laps, when Massa, on fresher tyres, closed the gap. He then pushed his PU once in the DRS zone and made the pass, which unfortunately we were not able to react to due, in part, to a potential battery issue, which meant we were limited with energy deployment. The midfield fight remains tight. It's all still to play for and we will continue to do all we can to take the fight to the other midfield teams in the remaining races in order to fulfil our season targets."
Check out our Sunday gallery from Austin, here.