08/12/2024
NEWS STORY
Yuki Tsunoda: "Unfortunately, today my race was almost finished after the start.
"I don't know exactly what happened, but honestly, I felt as if the clutch was stuck, as well as later when I came in for the pit stop as I struggled to stop properly. We'll review it later with the engineers to understand more about what occurred during the start. I tried my best after that and was able to recover some positions, but sadly it wasn't enough to get into the points. Looking back at this year, we really gave everything as a team and I'm happy with what I've done throughout the season, even if it's a shame to finish the last race of the season without a nice result which would have been a nice thank you for everyone within the team."
Liam Lawson: "A tough way to end the season, which is a shame because we started really well. It was probably one of the best races I've driven, even though we were a couple of laps down, the pace was actually really strong, we were fast. But we had an issue in the pits, which put us out of the race, which sucks because we could have potentially had a chance to score some points today. After that I just tried to treat it like a normal race, so I could show what I could do.
To everybody supporting the team and myself, a massive thank you, I've loved my 6 races so far in the car. Obviously I'm hoping to have a future in Formula One, I gave it everything and I'm looking forward to hopefully being back next year."
Tim Goss (Chief Technical Officer): "Today we had a good chance of a points finish with a well-executed one-stop race. Unfortunately, some technical and operational issues put us on the back foot. Yuki's start didn't proceed correctly, triggering anti-stall. From the back of the grid, he then drove a solid race, only narrowly losing out to the two-stopping Stroll in the closing laps. We have some early indications of the deficiencies in the launch start and will iron these out in the future. Liam's start and first lap went well by contrast, and from running in 10th place early on we felt we had a good chance against some of our rivals ahead. However, Liam's pit stop didn't go to plan with the front left wheel only partially in place before being tightened. The resulting refitting of the wheel and penalty meant there was little chance of competing. Ultimately, a brake issue meant we had to retire the car. We will come back stronger next season."
Laurent Mekies (Team Principal): "We did not have a satisfactory season finale, with Yuki suffering a problem off the start line and Liam getting a 10 second stop and go for an issue we had during his pitstop. It is a difficult way to finish the season, especially after all the good work done from the Team on the reliability and pit stop front this season.
Looking at the season as a whole, it's been a mega intense year from day one when we started this season, with a new mission and a new name.
We had our highs and lows along the way, but we have started to build stronger foundations together for the future of the Team, and it is now the time to thank everyone, in Faenza, Bicester, Milton Keynes, at Honda and at RBPT, for their fantastic work this season, which enabled us to progress in our journey.
A very special thank you also need to go to our drivers, Yuki and Liam, who both developed immensely this year, without forgetting the invaluable imprint Daniel left on all of us earlier in the year.
Whilst we are not happy with where we finished in the championship, our drivers have accumulated nearly double the points compared to last season, and we had our share of good fights on the track.
There are a lot of exciting challenges to come over the winter and we will be pushing very hard to keep our progression going into 2025."
Check out our Sunday gallery from the Yas Marina here.