07/04/2024
NEWS STORY
Fernando Alonso: "It was a great weekend for me with fifth position in Qualifying yesterday and sixth place in the race. It was one of my best for a while.
"I think we slightly outperformed our true position here this weekend, but we are executing our races very well this season and scoring good points for the team. Our plan for today worked well and a special thanks for the pit stops which were very impressive, so credit to all of the team for that. We still need to analyse our update package, so we'll have a look at all our data from this weekend in Japan ahead of our return to Shanghai."
Lance Stroll: "It was a difficult race today. Starting from P16 meant we had a compromised strategy and struggled to find any clean air. We also lacked the straight-line speed we needed. I did make some good overtakes at Turn 6 though, so that made for some fun racing. We were hoping to catch Yuki [Tsunoda] for P10, but the soft tyres just didn't have the grip towards the end of the race, so it was disappointing not to finish in the points. We'll take these learnings into China in a couple of weeks' time."
Mike Krack, Team Principal: "P6 was the best available to us today and a solid result. The updates we have brought seem to be a positive step and we have been able to finish ahead of our nearest competitor Mercedes and come home with eight points. Fernando drove really well today and the team executed flawless and consistent pit stops. With Lance he was fighting with Tsunoda who started six places ahead of him on the grid after Qualifying. He battled well and made some impressive overtakes in the Esses but unfortunately, we couldn't take the fight to him today. We have a short turnaround now back at the Campus and we look forward to returning to Shanghai and the first Sprint weekend of the season."
Check out our Sunday gallery from Suzuka here.