Compared to where we have been over the cause of the season in circuits like this
I think that's a good result for us.
How much did the incidents on Friday affect the rest of the weekend?
When you crash two cars it's always going to make for a very difficult weekend from then onwards.
We've done quite a lot of damage to the cars so, we've broken both floors, we've broken both rear
wings, we damaged quite a lot of suspension, on Lewis's car we also damaged the front wing and
done some cosmetic damage to the chassis. So, damage that we can repair but not repair over a
weekend. That meant completely rebuilding Lewis's car from scratch and it meant also trying to build
one floor out of two. We had one complete spare we could fit and we had to get the best out of the
two crashed floors to build another and it also meant we were compromised on George's rear wing
because we only had one complete spare rear wing that we chose to fit to Lewis's car because he
was going to have to come through the field which meant that George had to fit a rear wing which was
probably not the ideal level of downforce, it was a bit too much downforce for that circuit.
Having rebuilt the cars we also had to dial in the setup again and you've got very limited time
in FP2 to do that and that was always going to be another compromise and then finally having
damaged two cars as badly as we did on Friday the drivers are now in a position where if we damage
them in the sprint race we may well be in a position where we couldn’t race on Sunday. So,
all of that has to be factored in and all of that sort of compromises your weekend.
Was it difficult to fix both cars in time for FP2?
Well, I think you probably saw we managed to get George out about 5 minutes into FP2
and with Lewis we were about halfway through the session. There is a huge amount of work that went
into getting those cars ready and in Lewis's case he had done so much damage to the chassis,
actually only cosmetic damage but damage that we couldn’t fix in the field we had to sort of
build his car from scratch on Saturday morning. A number of years ago we used to be allowed to
have a T Car, a complete third car build in the garage, but the rules were changed so that you can
only have two race cars and you could carry just a spare tub or spare chassis. So that's the bit,
the drivers sits in with the fuel tank on the back of it. So, that car had to be built from nothing,
fitting the engine, the gearbox, all the suspension, all of the sort of car systems
that bolt around the chassis, all had to be put in place and the mechanics managed to do
that in three and a half hours on Saturday morning which is an amazing achievement
and all credit to them for actually getting us back out and into FP2. And the advantage
of getting out into FP2 is that you can actually make sure that the setup on Lewis's car was right,
that the balance was right and that he was happy with the car in time for sprint qualifying.
How was the race pace compared to expectation? I think you guys were watching all the races
and you will have seen that generally we have gone better in the races than we've gone in qualifying.
Having qualified pretty well at least showing good pace in qualifying before the crashes we
were hoping for really good pace in the races, I think what we saw on Sunday was encouraging
for us. I think on a circuit that hasn’t really played to our strengths in the past
to be where we were within a two to three tenths to the front was actually decent compared to what
we have seen recently. I think for George to come right through the field having had the accident at
the beginning again was encouraging for us going forward. And so overall, pretty happy with that.
Did George have any damage other than that to the front wing?
As you will have seen there was contact in the first lap between George and Perez
and that damaged the front wing endplate on George's car. While that might not seem like a
big effect it not only affects the total downforce of the car but more importantly it affects the
balance. That causes a loss of lap time but it also causes a change in the way the tyres degrade
because you are sliding on the front tyres you degrade the front tyres faster
and early in the race it quickly became apparent that George didn’t have the pace we would have
expected from him. So, what we decided to do is to make that first pitstop early
and in the pit stop to change the front wing and that's what we did.
From that point on George's pace was pretty encouraging and obviously to drive from where
he was pretty much at the back of the field all the way back to fourth place was a good result.
How was Lewis's overall pace through the weekend? As always, we've got two fantastic drivers and
Lewis is always going to bring home the best result he can get from the car.
I think if you saw on Friday, we looked, we were encouraged by the pace we had.
I think in qualifying we were going through the various qualifying sessions thinking, you know,
we had a strong chance to getting ourselves on the front row of the grid. A position we haven’t found
ourselves in in recent races and possibly why we ended up with two accidents with both cars in that
the drivers were just trying to find that extra little bit in the car, trying to get ourselves
onto that front row of the grid, the potential pace we believe we had in that car. I think in
the sprint session it was really difficult for Lewis to show the pace he had. I mean, once you
are in the traffic, when you in those DRS trains where there is multiple cars in front of you all
within DRS it is very difficult to pass and show the pace of the car. In the main race on Sunday,
Lewis was able to get through the slower cars that were in front of him getting himself up
into a position where he only had the Red Bulls and the Ferraris ahead. And while we finished the
race quite a chunk off the front, some of that was because the Ferraris and the Red Bull were able
to stop under that VSC at the end and stop onto the Medium tyre and effectively get a cheap stop.
If you correct the pace for degradation, we think we were probably two, maybe three tenths behind
the Ferrari which was the quickest car in the race this weekend. While that is not where we aim to
be, you know, we want to be fighting at the front, we want to be the quickest car we possibly can be,
compared to where we have been over the course of the season in circuits like this
I think that's a good result for us and it shows that the bits we are bringing to the
car are starting to make the step forward we want to make and hopefully we can keep making those
steps forward and get ourselves into a position where we can compete at the front in every race.
Why wasn’t Lewis able to get closer to the front running cars
after the second stop onto the Medium? So, at that stage of the race it was
about seven laps prior to the VSC that occurred because of Sainz's breakdown in the Ferrari.
So, we had already taken our second stop, we were on the Medium, Leclerc and Verstappen out
front were on the Hard tyre. So, when the VSC came out they would have been thinking if there
was a full Safety Car restarting the tyres on the Hard was going to be difficult. So,
for them it made perfect sense to stop again, to stop into the Medium, make use of that cheap stop,
if it turned into a full Safety Car they would be able to turn the tyres back on. For us we were
already on the right tyre. We were already on the Medium tyre. And so our issue was what do we do
from there? If we would have pitted potentially what would have happened if we had come out
behind slower cars behind we would drop back into traffic and at that point we were taking a risk.
So, the real simple balance we were trying to strike is would we have had an opportunity if
we would have made that extra stop and if not, were we taking a risk by pitting into traffic?
And so at that point the sensible solution was just to stay on the tyres we were on
and so as a consequence of that we were on seven lap older tyres than the cars in front and so we
were never going to be able to close them down both from the point of view we were down with
the tyre and also from the point of view they were a slightly quicker car at that stage of the race.
Thank you for all your questions. As always, it's really enlightening to see the questions
you are asking and we will be back again in two weeks’ time after the French Grand Prix.