07/10/2018
NEWS STORY
Racing Point Force India scored eight points in today's Japanese Grand Prix with Sergio Perez racing to seventh place ahead of Esteban Ocon in ninth.
Sergio Perez: "Today we had a good result: the best I could realistically hope to achieve. After yesterday's poor qualifying we made up a lot of positions and I feel we really got the maximum from the race. Our pace was strong and the team delivered a great strategy. We knew we had to be aggressive to beat the Haas and we nearly managed to undercut Grosjean at the pit-stop, but I lost a bit of time battling with Leclerc and I just fell short. At the VSC restart I managed to get really close to Grosjean and when I saw an opportunity I went for it. I am so excited about our performance today. We had to push hard and make some good overtakes: it was a fantastic race."
Esteban Ocon: "The team scored some good points today, but I'm not totally happy because our final result was dictated by the penalty yesterday. We have shown great speed all weekend - as the fourth quickest team - but if we don't start higher up it's difficult to show it in the race. There were some fun moments today and I had to make a lot of overtaking moves. When you had fresh tyres there was a big pace advantage and our strategy paid off in the end. I was close to catching Grosjean during the final few laps, but there wasn't a chance to make a move."
Otmar Szafnauer: "I think we made the most of our opportunities this afternoon. We had to fight all the way to the flag to score eight important points. Our strategy required both cars to pull off various overtaking moves to come back through the field, but it worked out well. Sergio made a fantastic move on Grosjean to finish as the ‘best of the rest'. Considering our starting positions, we recovered well today and the team did an excellent job with the strategy calls. We have unlocked some significant performance recently and we just need to keep up this points-scoring momentum in the final few races."
Check out our Sunday gallery from Suzuka, here.