2023 Formula 1 Las Vegas Grand Prix highlights

I suffered quite badly from graining today. It was difficult for us, and the Safety Car didn’t help with most getting a pitstop with little consequence. It’s one of those races that we’ll need to review after, as I thought we were managing quite well, but after the Safety Car in the middle of the race, I was racing everyone on old tyres. I could just about manage my own race, but I had to push a bit more, and it created this cycle which is difficult to manage. There are some positives to take from this weekend, so it’s not all bad, but obviously a bit frustrating to walk away without points. We’ll continue this fight for P7 to the very end.

Honestly, I don’t think there’s a lot we did wrong today. As a team, we came around 5th & 6th after the first lap, which was the goal. I felt like we managed that first stint relatively well, but as expected, the quicker cars started to come through towards the end of it. We went with our strategy and boxed for the Hard tyre with the plan to take us to the end. I don’t think we were in a bad position until that second Safety Car came out, and it killed any chance we had. We didn’t really have any option to come in and fit a new set. Others did, which put them at an advantage, but we tried to hold on until the end. As a weekend, we maximised our plan and executed well. It was just a bit of bad fortune today.

[It was] disappointing not to score some points today, but we weren’t quite able to manage the tyre graining well enough on the Hard tyre. Had we been able to control that graining a little better, then Alex could’ve had a final stint closer to that of Ocon, and a points finish would’ve been possible. The margins were fine today, and we didn’t quite get it right. Fortunately, we were still able to lead the pack of teams competing for 7th place in the Championship, and so we preserved our advantage heading into Abu Dhabi. Racing in Las Vegas has been a new and exciting challenge that has pushed the team, drivers and cars to new limits. We dealt with many things very well this weekend but couldn’t quite put it all together today.

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