07/10/2023
NEWS STORY
Fernando Alonso: "We prioritised tomorrow's race with our tyre choice in tonight's Sprint and we managed eighth after the penalty for Charles [Leclerc]. It was quite exciting with all the on-track battles, but the Soft tyres were not ideal towards the final few laps with high degradation. We don't know how many pitstops there will be tomorrow, so we need to keep our strategy open. We've saved a few sets so hopefully we can maximise this and target the top five positions. Congratulations to Max [Verstappen] for his third Drivers' Championship; he's dominated the season and deserves it."
Lance Stroll: "It was a tough Sprint race today. The temperatures were extremely hot and we had really high tyre degradation out on track. The opening few laps were fairly good and I managed to pass Valtteri [Bottas] during that phase, but I was losing the grip quickly after that so we couldn't make much more progress. We chose to box during the third Safety Car and put on a set of used Softs, but we were running out of laps and Yuki [Tsunoda] was defending hard. We're taking a lot more data into tomorrow's race, so we'll review that tonight and see what's possible."
Mike Krack, Team Principal: "There was a mix of tyre choices across the field, which created plenty of action and drama in tonight's Sprint. Both drivers delivered solid races and we managed to score a point with Fernando in P8. Sunday is the priority, though, and the work we have done today leaves us well placed to score more points tomorrow."
Check out our Saturday gallery from Lusail here.