17/09/2023
NEWS STORY
Dave Robson, Head of Vehicle Performance: Today was one of our best races of the season and to lose the opportunity to score good points with just a few laps to go is very disappointing for the whole team.
Alex drove exceptionally well in a very tactical race and when the opportunity arose to go on the offensive using our extra set of race tyres, he executed it perfectly on a track where overtaking is notoriously difficult. The team here in Singapore and in Grove worked brilliantly to give him the chance and he took it expertly.
Logan was doing well and matching Alex's performance despite running the older specification front wing. A small front lock-up towards the end of the first stint meant that he understeered; unfortunately, at this kind of track, the walls are so close and consequently, a tiny error has big consequences. With a new front wing and a new set of tyres, Logan then had a very lonely 2nd stint before the VSC gave him the chance to be more aggressive. However, the earlier damage meant that his car simply wasn't good enough to avoid the high tyre degradation.
Although we lost ground to some of our Championship rivals today, we can take heart from the fact that we fought very hard - and deserved more - with a car that wasn't well suited to this track. We now head straight to Suzuka for the Japanese Grand Prix and we can carry the momentum and learning from this weekend into one of the best events of the year.
Alex Albon: It should have been P8 today; we were running in a good position and had a great strategy. We did expect a safety car to come in around that period and we saved the new Medium set of tyres for that situation, which paid dividends in the race. We had a really good evening, we were coming up through the pack and were in P9 and getting close to Liam [Lawson]. We most likely needed a couple more laps to get past him but then I had contact with Checo [Pérez] after he went for, in my opinion, a very optimistic manoeuvre and that was me out of the points.
Logan Sargeant: One mistake was very costly today. I feel like the car was in a good place. I'm proud of those last two stints. I never gave up and did everything in my power to close back in and make something happen, but I could've used one more Safety Car. It wasn't a bad race in terms of pace and throughout the whole weekend. I need to cut out those small mistakes as it's such small margins. I felt good on that first stint. I could feel the tyres starting to go away and knew we were getting close to boxing, so it's a shame I made that mistake one or two laps too early and that could've changed our race. We can still take the positives as we've been decent this weekend considering the package we had. We'll look forward to Suzuka.
Check out our Sunday gallery from Marina Bay here.