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19/05/2024
NEWS STORY
Lance Stroll: "It's good to come away from Imola with a couple of points.
"We elected to extend our first stint on the Medium compounds hoping for a Safety Car, but that never came and so we had to make up positions on track. That early tyre management meant I had the advantage of newer Hards towards of the end of the race, giving me the pace to pass Nico [Hülkenberg] and Yuki [Tsunoda] which was fun. This weekend has been tough though. We know we're not as competitive as we want to be, and we'll have to push hard to find the performance we're missing."
Fernando Alonso: "It was a difficult day and weekend in general for us. We started from the pit lane and changed a few things on the setup of the car. It meant that we could gather a lot of data which we need to analyse over the next couple of days. We opted for the Soft tyres at the start of the race and we were hoping for a Safety Car to change things up. When nothing happened ahead of us, we looked to try a few different compounds out and essentially used it as a bit of a test session. We will need to regroup and put ourselves in the best position in Monaco."
Mike Krack, Team Principal: "We leave Imola with two important points following a strong drive by Lance and excellent team strategy. Lance made his one-stop race work with a long first stint, while Fernando's early pit stop on lap eight helped draw several cars in for early stops. Lance was then able to make strong overtakes into Turn 1 on Hülkenberg and Tsunoda to secure P9. It was not easy to overtake, so it was great to watch Lance making those moves. It was always going to be difficult for Fernando to progress to the points after the difficult Qualifying, but he played the team game perfectly. The Imola weekend showed that we are still not competitive enough. Our focus is on extracting the full potential of the AMR24 for the races to come, starting next week in Monaco."
Check out our Sunday gallery from Imola here.