Scuderia AlphaTauri duo Liam Lawson and Yuki Tsunoda could not push on from their starting positions of 11th and ninth, with the Japanese home driver slipping back down to 12th by the end, with the Kiwi staying 11th.
21-year-old New Zealand driver Lawson, who stepped into the AlphaTauri car to fill in for the injured Daniel Ricciardo, drove a superb race from 10th on the grid to finish in ninth place and score his first F1 points for the team after impressing during his two previous outings at the Dutch and Italian Grands Prix.
Liam Lawson
We didn’t have the performance in the long run today and didn’t quite have the speed of the Alpines ahead. The team and I worked hard this weekend to maximise the sessions and made steps in each one. The fight with Yuki was aggressive, but I think it was a fair race. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough, and I guess neither of us had the pace to make the top 10. I’m still trying to score points for the team and prove myself every time I get in the car, and I think I did that today.
Yuki Tsunoda
It’s frustrating because there was pace today, but I didn’t have the opportunity to maximise it. On this track, it’s hard to follow because the tyres overheat very quickly, and I feel like we pitted for the complex compound too late, so I was behind everyone and had to catch up to the pack. I think there was no chance to catch P10 today. It’s a shame that I couldn’t perform well and get a good result in front of the Japanese fans, but I got a lot of energy from them, so thank you to all the fans. In the end, it is what it is.
JONATHAN EDDOLLS – Chief Engineer
Having saved only one medium and one hard tyre set for the race, we knew that with these track temperatures, we would be slightly disadvantaged by those cars with two hard compound tyres left. Equally, we had expected the medium tyres to behave similarly to the complex compound. It was always going to be a race about tyres. We started both cars on the soft compound, and after the incidents at the start, both our vehicles emerged in P9 and P10. The stint on the soft tyres was short, and we reacted to Hulkenberg. With sound in laps from the drivers and great pitstops, we kept both our cars ahead. Our main issue was the pace of the medium compound in the middle stint. We had high degradation, and this was where the damage was done. This will be the main focus of the post-race work, as other teams were able to make it work. Our pace on the hard compound at the end was competitive, but by this stage, we had already lost out to the two Alpines, ending up with both cars just outside the points. Although we lost some positions in the race, there are some positive signs from the weekend. The package is working, as demonstrated by the good qualifying performance and the pace in the race, which has taken a step forward compared to before. We are continuing to develop the car, and we’re so close to being able to score points on merit, so we’ll keep fighting to the end of the season.
Scuderia AlphaTauri Team best pictures:
