19/07/2020
NEWS STORY
George Russell finished 18th and Nicholas Latifi 19th in the Hungarian Grand Prix. George started the race 12th, and Nicholas 15th, both on the intermediate Pirelli tyre.
George ran a three-stop race, pitting first on lap four for the soft and then on lap 19 for the medium Pirelli tyre. His last stop was on lap 50 for another set of used options.
Nicholas ultimately stopped five times, initially pitting on lap three from P10 for the soft Pirelli tyre but then once again the next lap due to a puncture following a collision with Sainz while exiting the pitlane. The next two stops were on lap 31 for the medium, and then for the soft on lap 49. His final stop was on lap 52 for the hard Pirelli tyre. Nicholas also served a five-second penalty due to an unsafe release from his first pitstop.
Dave Robson, Head of Vehicle Performance: It's been a difficult day for the whole team. George had a poor start and struggled to recover in the mixed conditions. Meanwhile, Nicholas got a very good start and made a lot of progress during the opening lap. Sadly, his race was effectively over when he suffered a puncture in a collision at the pit exit. Conditions were not easy in the damp conditions and the dry tyres were difficult to manage leading to a variety of strategies. It was a day when things can quickly go for you, or against you, and today was not our day. However, we need to look at the race pace of the car and review how we can better capitalise on strong qualifying performances.
Following three successive races we now head home for a brief break before returning to Silverstone for the start of another European triple-header.
George Russell: Firstly, we made a bad start in the wet and it was very tricky. I think everyone on the inside struggled for whatever reason. From then on in, our race pace was really poor, we just need to understand what is going on. Last year it was the opposite, our race pace was better than the qualifying pace. Now we are pretty fast on the Saturday and struggle a lot on the Sunday. However, if we look at everything and see the steps we have made, especially on the Saturdays, we have got to be relatively pleased. There are plenty of positives, we just need to rectify the negatives and make our pace of the car a bit better across the ball.
Nicholas Latifi: We had a good start and first lap, and then it all came undone with the pitstop, unfortunately that can happen in a busy pitlane. I got the puncture and then unfortunately sustained quite a lot of damage bringing the car back to the pits. We had a big chunk of the floor missing, so just keeping the car on the track the whole race was quite difficult. Today just wasn't meant to be, it was a bit unfortunate, but still there are positives to take from yesterday. We just need to reset going into Silverstone.
Check out our Race Day gallery from Budapest, here.