Pressiteade
Itwas a lively start to the afternoon for Fernando, who made a strong getaway offthe line to put pressure on the cars ahead. After briefly taking sixth place onthe run to Turn 3 on the opening lap, Fernando settled into eighth in the earlyrunning.
TheSpaniard pitted on lap 27 for new Hards with the pit crew delivering a slicktwo-second stop. As the order fell into place, it was a race to the line withFernando battling with Charles Leclerc and Lance Stroll for seventh place. Withadditional pressure from Yuki Tsunoda behind, Fernando battled hard to crossthe line in ninth.
Estebanenjoyed a clean start to the race from seventeenth on the grid and moved up tofifteenth by the end of lap one. He pitted on lap 36, replacing his startingMediums for Hards, and remained in the group that was narrowly hovering outsidethe top ten. He advanced to fourteenth place by passing Antonio Giovinazzi ninelaps from the end and held position until the chequered flag.
EstebanOcon, started P17, finished P14:
“Ithas been a challenging weekend. Today, we were in a difficult position at thestart and it was always going to be hard to work our way up the field. We werejust not able to follow the group in front where there were some battles andpossible opportunities to take. We’re back racing in Austria again next weekand we’ll try some different things to find solutions. We have some directionsto take and I’m already looking forward to next weekend.”
FernandoAlonso, started P8, finished P9:
“Idon’t think we could do much more than ninth position today, but it’s good toscore some more points for the team. We had a good start and fought with two orthree cars on the first lap. After the first pit-stop we were right behindLance Stroll in eighth and fought with him for the rest of the race. In the endthe Ferraris on fresh tyres were just too fast for us. We race here again nextweek, so we’ll analyse everything and try to optimise the car for the weekend.”
Davide Brivio, Racing Director:
“Thetarget today was to score points. We were unlucky on a couple of occasions whenwe got caught in traffic and lost ground when we should have attacked, so wehad to settle for ninth, but Fernando put up a very good fight. On Esteban’sside, it was always going to be difficult starting from seventeenth. We triedas much as we could, but it was a stable race with no real opportunity. We willtry to learn as much as possible from this weekend to bring it into the nextrace here in just one week’s time.”
