01/07/2023
NEWS STORY
Lance Stroll: "Today is about Dilano van 't Hoff, the young Dutch driver who we lost in an accident at Spa this morning.
"Dilano was a member of the motorsport family, and my thoughts are very much with him, his loved ones, and the MP Motorsport team. I feel very strongly that change needs to be made to make Eau Rouge safer; we've lost two young talents in junior motorsport over the last few years and that needs to be spoken about.
"We had a strong race today in Austria and I was pleased with my opening lap. The focus was on managing our tyres through the drying track conditions; the team made a good call with the strategy and judged that well. Fourth and fifth is a strong result and we'll race hard again tomorrow."
Fernando Alonso: "I am happy with the overall points from today for Aston Martin. In the end we scored three more than Ferrari and eight over Mercedes so it's a good Saturday Sprint for the team. It was a fun but fair fight with Lance, and it was only the last lap where we were very close into Turn Eight. We considered going onto the slicks, but we had seven laps to the end, and we felt like we had enough margin to those behind. The fact that Nico [Hulkenberg] stopped one second in front of me and finished one second behind showed it was very close, but it was the correct decision.
"Hopefully we can score more tomorrow. The weather should be better, but we start seventh so we'll see what we can manage and aim for a top-five finish.
"It was very sad to hear the news from Spa and my thoughts are with Dilano's loved ones. The visibility is very poor in certain circuits at high-speed in wet conditions and we can't afford for something like this to happen again."
Tom McCullough, Performance Director: "We had pretty challenging weather for the Sprint events today, but both Lance and Fernando drove faultlessly, and the team managed the conditions well to score nine important points - gaining eight on Mercedes and three on Ferrari. The rain showers made for a dramatic racing, especially when the track started to dry out, and we had to weigh up the tricky decision of whether to switch to slick tyres.
"We held our nerve and judged that we could see out the race on Intermediates. It was a decision we got just right as Nico was catching us on dry tyres on the final lap. It was a Sprint race full of drama, plenty of overtakes, and fair racing - a real treat for the fans."
Check out our Saturday gallery from the Red Bull Ring here.