08/10/2023
NEWS STORY
Yuki Tsunoda: "Today was tough and felt hotter than Singapore, so it was definitely a challenging race.
"My start was good and smooth, I made up places and was in the points. It felt ok inside the car and the balance was also good, but we were just too slow and couldn't keep up the pace. It's not easy to find a quick solution, but I'm confident that together with the team, we'll look through the data and see how we can improve for the future. I think Liam might not be driving for us in Austin, so I want to say thank you to him because he did a very good job. I enjoyed the time together as good friends and teammates."
Liam Lawson: "It was really tricky out there. From the start of the race, we had no speed, and throughout, we were managing some stability issues, so it's something to analyse. It was very hot, and when you're struggling with the car, it makes it even harder to extract the pace. It seems to be my last race with the team before Daniel comes back, so I want to say a big thank you to the team, and it's a shame to finish like this."
Guillaume Dezoteux (Head of Vehicle Performance): "The race today was constrained by a maximum number of laps we could do on each tyre set, which was 18. For Liam, starting towards the back of the grid, we tried to start aggressively on the soft compound tyre in an attempt to attack other cars at the start and pit at the first opportunity, which happened during the Safety Car period. Unfortunately, Liam has been struggling to find the pace after his first stop. The pace in the third stint was closer to Yuki, and he was able to further improve towards the end of the race on the medium compound, but it wasn't good enough to catch the cars in front. Yuki's race was also difficult. In his third stint, he was able to stay with Magnussen, but a battle with him and Albon - who had just pitted behind - overstressed his tyres, and he started to lose ground. Since Singapore, we have been on a positive trend with our car performance, both in qualifying and the race, but here in Doha, we didn't manage to achieve the same. We need to analyse the balance evolution and tyre status because we couldn't match our direct competitors today."
Check out our Sunday gallery from Lusail here.