22/07/2018
NEWS STORY
Brendon Hartley: "I'm happy with how today went. I lost some time behind the Williams at the beginning but I had some fun battles out there. We definitely had good pace on the harder compound tyre, but I struggled at the end when I moved on to the Ultrasoft. I was disappointed to lose a place to Grosjean but he had a lot more pace than me. I kept it clean and we made the right call to brave it and stay out when the rain came. The team and myself had great communication during the changing conditions and in the end it paid off. I also used some of my experience from endurance racing to help make the call, so I'm really happy with the race I did and to bring home one point."
Pierre Gasly: "We knew it was going to be difficult today starting from the back because of the tactical engine penalty, so, as we didn't have much to lose we could be bold with our strategy. The weather made things very tricky and we were unlucky gambling on our strategy when we pitted for the wet tyres as we expected more rain, but the track wasn't wet enough and the heavier rain didn't come. As the wet tyre began to overheat on the dry track, we were forced to make an additional stop to go back to the Ultrasofts. This didn't help but we had to take the risk. It just didn't work today, so we will reset and focus on next week in Budapest."
Franz Tost (Team Principal): "Starting from the back of the grid was of course not an easy task. However, both drivers managed to have a reasonably good start and during the race they could show a decent performance. At the end, it was good for Brendon to be able to score a point. As for Pierre, we decided to gamble and called him in for the pit stop to the Full Wets because heavy rain was a high possibility, but unfortunately it didn't arrive. I'm sorry for Pierre, but sometimes you need to dare and this is what we opted for today. Our performance has improved during the race as we managed to do some good lap times, and this gives us confidence we'll be able to show a strong performance in Budapest."
Toyoharu Tanabe (Honda F1 Technical Director): "The arrival of rain changed the story of this race. It was good to see both our cars take the chequered flag. Brendon did a good job to work his way up from sixteenth on the grid into tenth place, to pick up a well deserved point. However, as we now look ahead to next week's Hungarian Grand Prix, we know that we have not been competitive in the past few races and we have to work hard to improve our overall performance."
Check out our Sunday gallery from Hockenheim, here.