03/09/2023
NEWS STORY
Liam Lawson: "A couple of things went wrong today, we need to look into the start, as I could have done a better job, and that's where we lost the chance. The pace wasn't too bad then, but the race slightly got away from us.
"I'm still learning the procedures and definitely starting to feel more comfortable in the car, but I'm just a little bit disappointed with my race, as I think we may have had the pace for points today. I'm not sure though, so we need to look into it. These races are longer than I'm used to, so definitely adjusting, but I felt much more prepared than I did last weekend, so I'm happy about that."
Yuki Tsunoda: "I heard a weird sound from the car, and after that, I didn't feel any power. We don't know the exact reason yet, but we'll investigate. Obviously, no reliability issue would've been nice, but it's only the first time this year, so we stay positive and come back stronger. I wanted to race, especially starting so close to the points at our home race, so it's a shame because our pace looked quite strong during practice, but there is a lot we can take from this weekend. The car performance has been looking consistently solid the last couple of weekends, and even if we struggled on some days, we were able to come back stronger the next day. To be able to extract the maximum is one of our strengths, so I'm not worried about the future."
Claudio Balestri (Chief Engineer - Vehicle Performance): "Today, the target was to score points, and we didn't. Yuki started in P11, but his race was over before the start due to an issue with the Power Unit during the formation lap, which stopped the car on track. As for Liam, who was starting in P11 at the restart, we decided to put him on medium tyres, which turned out to be the main compound chosen by almost all the cars on the grid, to allow some flexibility with the strategy. At the end of Lap 1, Liam was in P12 and was able to keep up with the pace of the car around us, but the tyre degradation, which is critical in Monza, especially at the rear, was high. Therefore, we pitted him on Lap 13 to fit the hard compound. We wanted to push more on tyres to go for a two-stop strategy, so we called him in again on Lap 33 to fit another set of medium tyres. In the last stint, the lap times were good, and Liam was closing the gap compared to some one-stoppers. We were able to overtake Sargeant on the final lap, while Bottas stayed in front, so Liam finished the race in P11, just outside the points. We now need to go home and analyse what we could have done better, to come back stronger in Singapore and beyond."