Pressiteade
The doublepoints finish means the team moves onto 120 points to remain fifth in theConstructors’ Championship and six points from third place.
Anaction-packed race start saw Daniel move up to eighth after an early battlewith the Red Bull of Alexander Albon, whilst Esteban was caught in a melee forthe final points scoring position. As predicted, light rain was ever presentduring the race, but it was never heavy enough to alter proceedings. With griplevels consistently low, Daniel was the first to box with his Soft tyreswearing down rapidly forcing him to pit on lap 14 for fresh Mediums.
With Danieldropping towards the rear of the field having pitted early, Esteban - on thealternate strategy - completed 53 laps on his Medium tyres and was the last tomake a first stop. By the time of his stop, Daniel, had scythed his way throughthe field with others stopping and was safely inside the top ten and in abattle for eighth with Sebastian Vettel.
A slightly slowstop for Esteban meant he re-joined just ahead of his teammate, and despitehaving strong pace on the Softs for the final fifteen laps he was unable tomake any major inroads on the cars ahead. Esteban crossed the finish line ineighth position, with Daniel just behind in ninth making it a double-pointsfinish for the team.
Daniel Ricciardo, started P10, finished P9:
“It was a crazy start to the race, and we did manage to make up someplaces on the first lap moving up to eighth. Once it settled, we struggled forgrip on the Softs and so we pitted quite early. We had the Mediums on for alengthy spell, so we had to spend a lot of the second stint managing the tyres.I never really had the tyres in the right window so I couldn’t push too hard.Eighth and ninth for the team isn’t a bad result so I think we’ll take thatfrom this weekend.”
Esteban Ocon, started P11, finished P8:
“That was a good race for me. It was very hard at the start being on theMediums, but I kept calm and together with the team we managed it extremelywell and made sure we remained competitive throughout. I completed 53 laps onthem! They seemed to last a long time and my pace was strong even towards theend of the stint. It kept raining too in short spells, so we had to be mindfulof that with the grip levels. In the end I think we did a good job to get bothcars inside the top ten.”
Cyril Abiteboul, Team Principal:
“We came away from Germany with a great buzz after Daniel’s podium, itis therefore very disappointing to see that the car has struggled massively forgrip all the way through the weekend. The team has managed to improve from a verypoor start on Friday and eighth and ninth today is probably the best result wewere realistically going to get starting from tenth and eleventh. What isinteresting about today’s race is that we never managed to make the Softs work,but Esteban’s massive stint on the Mediums was extremely competitive. It is aclear demonstration that the weekend was dictated by the tyre performance: aswe go towards the end of the season and we could experience similarcircumstances in the next two races, we absolutely must understand what hashurt us if we are to finish strongly in the Constructors’ Championship. I amglad for Esteban as he made no mistakes in a tricky weekend and contributed tokeeping the team in sight of our rivals.”
