30/06/2024
NEWS STORY
Daniel Ricciardo: "It was a tough race and I think we were a bit more on the defence, so it took a lot of concentration and effort.
"I had a good start on the outside and was looking good, but then I lost a couple of positions as there was no more room and I had to go wide. Once we settled after the start of the race, I think we did well; the team did a good job with the strategy to secure the position over the Alpines, and then I feel like I drove a good defence against Fernando (Alonso) and then Pierre (Gasly) in the last stint. We made a nice step from Barcelona, and it's been a better weekend, so I'm happy to bring home some points. Now we'll try to make another good step forward for Silverstone and then maybe that puts us in another fight for points."
Yuki Tsunoda: "The race started well, I was behind Alpine and Daniel after the start, but by the third stint, I was way behind. The pace was off, and we'll have to find out why. For sure Daniel did a good job during today's race, so in the end, we had a good conclusion, and we seem to understand more about what direction we as a team have to take for the coming races, so that's a positive."
Claudio Balestri (Chief Engineer - Vehicle Performance): "We decided to start today's race on mediums, similarly to the majority of the other cars, and at end of Lap 2 Daniel was in P12 and Yuki in P13. At this stage, we decided to split the two strategies, pitting Daniel and leaving Yuki out for the first stint. The undercut worked very well with Daniel as we were able to gain positions against the two Alpines, but the Haas cars were able to stay in front of him for the rest of the race. In the last laps, he tried to put additional pressure on Magnussen, but we were not able to overtake him, so Daniel finished P9, scoring two very important points. As for Yuki, his race was different and a bit more difficult. We went long for the first stint on the medium and the pace was similar to the car in front on a similar strategy, but running a shorter last stint, we were not able to maximise the advantage, finishing P15. Mixed feelings, but we are still positive, and we now switch our thoughts to next week's race in Silverstone, where we will try to improve further and get more important points."
Laurent Mekies (Team Principal): "In the few days since Barcelona, everyone at the factory and at the track has been working hard on extending our understanding of the updates we introduced in Spain as part of our aggressive development programme. That work continued here during the only Free Practice session, while the Sprint also provided us with valuable data. It is never ideal to do specifications comparison during a Sprint weekend, but we felt that it was a necessary investment for our midterm future. The team and drivers did a very good job putting together the best configuration possible for Saturday and Sunday. We are bringing home two good points, with Daniel finishing in P9 after an intense battle today, and following yesterday's strong qualifying, which saw us finishing up at less than two-hundredths from Q3. Yuki was only a fraction behind in both qualifying and the race, but with the midfield battle being as tight as ever, it was enough for him to fall outside of the points today. Once again, we only have a couple of days before we are back on track, this time at Silverstone, not far from our UK-based headquarter. The smallest pace difference can make you go from a points finish to the back of the grid, so everyone at the factory will be flat out to further pursue our car development programme."
Check out our Sunday gallery from the Red Bull Ring here.