13/11/2021
NEWS STORY
Sebastian Vettel: "I made a good start and gained a couple of places, but we had to fight hard to stay there with fast cars, such as the McLaren [of Daniel Ricciardo], behind us. I was in the train of cars, benefiting from the DRS, which certainly helped. The race pace was decent but starting on the Medium meant that we were faster towards the end [compared with those on Softs]. I think it will be similar tomorrow. It is a long race, and we will need to fight hard to score points because there are some quicker cars, including Lewis [Hamilton], behind us."
Lance Stroll: "We have moved up a place for tomorrow's race, which is a positive. There was not a lot of action around us at the start, so we were still P15 after the first lap. Then, at the end, [Yuki] Tsunoda started to suffer on the Softs in front of us, while we had managed our Mediums pretty well. He lost DRS from the car in front of him and we got him on the last lap, so I think it was probably the right thing to do [starting on the Mediums]. It was tough to overtake today, but it is a long race and anything can happen at this circuit, so maybe there will be a few opportunities for us tomorrow. We will see what we can do from P14 and aim to make up a few places."
Otmar Szafnauer, CEO & Team Principal: "Sebastian made a great start to be ninth on lap one, while Lance consolidated his P15 grid slot. Meanwhile, Lewis [Hamilton] was on an impressive charge from the back of the field, passing Lance early on and Seb on lap 15, which pushed Seb down to P10. There he remained until the end of the sprint, which result leaves him well placed to drive for good points in tomorrow's feature race [P9 on tomorrow's grid as a result of a five-place penalty for Hamilton]. Lance harried [Yuki] Tsunoda throughout all 24 laps, despite reporting issues with understeer and less than optimal traction, but Yuki defended well. Even so, Lance was able to force his way past on the final lap, so he will start tomorrow's feature race from P14. Like Seb, he will be aiming to score points for us tomorrow."
Check out our Saturday gallery from Interlagos, here.