22/05/2022
NEWS STORY
Yuki Tsunoda: "That was a super tough race, it was so hot in the car today and then we were in a constant battle to make it into the points, so the pressure was there. I'm quite happy with my performance today and where we finished in the race, we haven't been comfortable in the car the whole weekend, so to be fighting for points was a good step forward. However, I think we've still got a lot of work to do to be able to be higher up the midfield."
Pierre Gasly: "I'm extremely disappointed with today, it's very frustrating. I had a small touch early on that damaged the car and from then on, I had no pace, we were losing downforce and sliding everywhere. I take responsibility for the accident with Stroll, I was pushing it to the limit, so I want to apologise to Lance for that. We tried everything we could from then on, but at the end of the day there wasn't much we could do."
Jody Egginton (Technical Director): "Today's race has been tough, but with both drivers battling hard we managed to come away with a point. Pierre picked up front wing damage early on, which made the car a bit trickier to drive and cost him some time. Yuki had a cleaner start and was in a battle with the McLarens and Alonso early on in the race, fighting for points. With the hot conditions moving the race to a three stop for the majority, track position was key, and Yuki's final stop was timed to prevent Vettel, who was one of the two stoppers, getting ahead when we stopped and this worked out well. Then it was a case of getting past Schumacher and trying to get back on terms with Alonso, who had got ahead earlier in the race. We have a lot to understand from this event, as we have not been able to get the car working as we want, but we have a few ideas already and the expectation is that we will bounce back in the next events."
Franz Tost (Team Principal): "First of all, big congratulations to Oracle Red Bull Racing for this fantastic 1-2, which has helped Max in the close battle for the Championship.
"From our side, the weekend was quite difficult and we struggled with the car. We suffered with the rear, especially with the tyres overheating, therefore we couldn't show a good performance yesterday in Qualifying. Because of this, today in the race we started only from P13 and 14. Fortunately, both drivers had a good start and came back in the first lap with Yuki in 11th and Pierre in 12th. The race pace at the beginning was reasonable on the Softs, but after a few laps we decided to go for a three-stop strategy, so we called Yuki in to change to the Mediums. On this compound he struggled a little bit to warm up the tyres, which meant he lost a few seconds to Alonso. Then we changed back to the Softs to end the race. We scored one point and I think that's the most we could get out of this weekend after a difficult Qualifying session. As for Pierre, he was struggling with the car, suffering from an unstable rear, and was not able to fight for points this race. From the first laps onwards, he had damage on the front wing, which of course had a negative impact on the performance of the car. We need to go away and analyse everything, to bring the car back to the level of performance we had in the past, trying to understand why we lose performance in hot conditions, also because we will have other races with very high temperatures - like Budapest for example. Now we go to Monaco, where we normally perform well, so I hope this will be the case again this year."