16/09/2018
NEWS STORY
Lance Stroll finished 14th and Sergey Sirotkin 19th in the Singapore Grand Prix. Sergey started on the ultrasoft Pirelli tyre in P19, with Lance P20 on the soft Pirelli tyre. The Safety Car was immediately deployed on the first lap. Sergey picked up debris so made an early stop, switching to the soft tyre on lap 3 as the safety car ended. Both drivers made a clean restart, Lance climbed to P14, with Sergey behind in P15. Lance pitted on lap 40 for the ultrasoft tyre whilst Sergey pitted again on lap 45.
Paddy Lowe, Chief Technical Officer: It was a normal long race in Singapore and full of events. Sergey picked up a bit of wheel rim from Ocon's accident which meant we had to take an early stop. We put the soft tyre on, planning to go to the end. Sergey did a fantastic job, managing the tyre and his pace, keeping traffic behind him under a lot of pressure. He ultimately got caught up in an impact with Perez, and that ruined his race otherwise he could have been looking at quite a good finishing position. On Lance's side, we took advantage of the traffic and the different queues on the circuit to optimise his pitstop which gave him a better track position than we could have hoped for at the start. He was able to come in 15th on the road and inherited 14th due to a time penalty for Grosjean, which we were chasing until the end. So real congratulations to the team, another two cars home in a very tough race, and especially to the drivers; they were driving at the maximum for nearly two hours and got the best they could from the car.
Lance Stroll: I will have to watch the race, as I don't really know what happened around me, but I think there was quite a bit of chaos, so probably I benefited from that. I am really happy with the end result as 14th was a great result for the pace we had yesterday, and throughout the weekend. It wasn't easy - I would say more mentally than physically. I felt pretty good in the car as physically I had prepared. Mentally I am on the edge with no room for error. It wasn't easy as every millimetre counts round here and one millimetre too much is contact with the wall. I was trying to get everything out of the car on every lap, as for sure 61 laps round a track like this are very challenging. I pulled it off, so I am happy.
Sergey Sirotkin: It was a fight. I fought all my way through, I was fighting and squeezing every single moment. We were in a good position at the beginning of the race, and up to the point of contact with the Force India car. This caused a lot of damage to my car and after that it was more about survival. It's a difficult track to overtake, so I still fought as hard as I could to protect the car and keep my position, but lap after lap, it was becoming more difficult and the car was falling apart. I gave everything in terms of myself and with the car to bring the best performance home.
Check out our Sunday gallery from Singapore, here.