I think the main thing is that we’re desperate to get back on track
and hopefully win the race. We are all quite grateful that we’ve only
got a couple of days to wait to get back onto the circuit.
Did the chassis change affect the cars in any way? The answer to that is no.
As you could see by Lewis’s confidence in the car that he had on Saturday.
It’s quite normal for us to swap chassis between drivers. They don’t drive the same car
all year and the chassis themselves are components that are very strong,
very precisely made and it’s very, very rare that that would introduce any kind of issue.
Why was the W12 lacking pace? Well, it’s fair to say in qualifying Max was on pole by a quarter
of a second and we weren’t really able to do that time. Our drivers did good laps, they were clean
laps but most of that was coming from Max on the back straight, it is a very long straight
in Ricard and we were not making enough up in the corners to be able to get any closer. However,
on Sunday you saw that when Lewis took the lead of the race in the first stint he was actually able
to pull a bit of a gap, by the end of the stint it looked like Max was actually dropping back more
than we were. So, it was encouraging to see that and that is a picture we have seen, if you ignore
Baku and Monaco, which are very specific circuits, we’ve seen this picture at previous races where
they are actually a bit ahead on the Saturday in qualifying but actually when it comes to the race
we are right there with them or even a fraction quicker in terms of degradation or race pace.
Lewis did talk about making a lot of setup changes from Friday night into qualifying and are there
any positives that can come from that? Well, essentially those changes were adjustments to
the mechanical balance, so, the roll bars on the car, trying to change how it distributes the load
across the four wheels around the lap and also the aero balance, using the front wing to try and put
more downforce on the front axle which can make the car more responsive when you turn into the
corners. Those are the basic tools, now in terms of the positives, well, as you heard him say in
qualifying he was much happier with the rear end of the car, he could turn in with confidence,
he could carry speed and he didn’t feel like it was going to step out when he got into the corners
and that was useful because we’ve got some direction from that, that if we have
this problem again at another circuit we know how we can tackle it in the future.
Why was Valtteri pitted first? Well, we were monitoring a vibration that we started to see
relatively early on in the first stint and that was on the front left corner and that was getting
worse and worse. So, we have levels that we consider acceptable to run at on circuit, if we go
much beyond that the vibration can get so bad that not only can the driver not really see, you start
to run a risk of damage to the tyre or even damage to the car. So, as we approach that limit we were
getting ready to make the stop, the other thing you could see was that it got so bad for Valtteri
himself, he was dropping back and ultimately that was what triggered the stop, it was earlier
than we wanted to but ultimately it was the only decision that we could make at the time.
Why did we not box Lewis the lap after Valtteri? Well,
with hindsight we would have done that. The reality was that we had 3.2 seconds of clear
air between Lewis and Max and that we thought was enough to protect against the undercut.
Now, how did Max actually get out in front? Well, there is a couple of areas where we lost a bit of
time. However, it wasn’t the pit stop, the pit stops themselves were very good. There was a bit
that we lost at the back end of the lap and coming into the box with Lewis obviously on older tyres,
we also had a bit of wheelspin leaving the pit box itself which cost a little bit but ultimately
the issue was that in our tools, the amount of time we thought we needed to protect against the
undercut was insufficient and we’ll make sure that we can get that corrected in the future
but as I said, with hindsight we would have done that. That would have allowed Max to go
and offset and be on a more similar strategy to Perez so he could have still presented
a risk end of race, but what we wouldn’t have done was given up the lead of the race.
Did we consider a two stop or was it always going to be a one stop? Well,
it’s fair to say that in the meetings that we had on Sunday morning with the drivers,
we were thinking it was going to be a one stop. We also thought we were going to need to do a bit of
management. Now, the track on Sunday was quite different. We had some rain before the race,
cloud cover remained and it was much, much cooler and that meant that the limiting
axle went from being the rears, which were the ones you would have run out of first on Friday,
suddenly became the front. It was a much more understeery balance and it
was really damaging that front left tyre. Now, in terms of the conversations during the race,
with Lewis the big issue for him on converting to a two stop was where Sergio Perez was on track.
He had been able to do a much longer first stint, he was on fresh tyres and Lewis would
have needed to overtake him. They did have a speed advantage, his tyres would have still been
in pretty good shape and we were worried that we would lose a bit of time trying to do that. Now,
as you saw with Max, he made the two stop work but crucially, when he came up to Sergio he just moved
aside and let him through and that isn’t a luxury that Lewis would have had. In Valtteri’s case,
well the big problem was that, again, because Sergio had been able to offset that first stint,
if we had stopped Valtteri when he asked to convert to two,
his tyres would only have been about five laps newer than Sergio’s. The other thing
was that Sergio was on the Hard tyre, Valtteri was on the Medium and that was not as quick. So,
the big concern there was that we would have converted Valtteri’s strategy,
taken him out of that third place, dropped him into fourth and there wouldn’t have been
a tyre life difference for him to be able to attack and pass and again like Lewis,
he would have had to deal with that straight line speed advantage that the Red Bull held.
Would we have had more points if we had split the strategy between the drivers?
I think I explained in the previous answer that converting to a two presented significant risks
for them and certainly for Lewis from P2, he may have only got back to P2, for Valtteri
it would have pretty much consigned him to that fourth place finish. So,
that probably wasn’t really the issue for us. It’s more that with the vibration, we triggered
the early pit stops that meant the one stop was quite a difficult strategy to carry out. It’s
possible that we could have instructed the drivers to do a bit more management, that might have
meant that we were in a better situation end of race and obviously we thought Lewis was safe with
that 3.2 second gap, it turned out it wasn’t and if we had known that, we would have stopped him
the lap after Valtteri. Those are really the key areas where we look to perform better in
the future, rather than that simple question of should we have converted to a two stop.
Why didn’t we pit Valtteri for fastest lap? You have seen that this is something that
we do quite often because typically either us or Red Bull has got a free stop and they can
take that fourth place with an extra point. We were talking about it and we were ready for it,
but when Sergio had passed Valtteri, he’d gone four wheels off track in Turn 10 and that was
the point that we had raised with race control, whether he was going off track to actually make
the pass and gaining a lasting advantage. Now, while they were contemplating that and ultimately,
they decided that no further action was necessary, but in that period, we lost the window where we
would have actually had to stop Valtteri. If they had given Sergio a five second penalty,
we would have wanted to be within that five second window, and by stopping we would have dropped
out. It was really just unfortunate timing at the end, while those discussions were going on,
we missed the point where we would have had to come in and take new tyres.
Is it difficult to understand the data post-race when you’ve got such a short time
as we have in the middle of this triple header sequence? Well,
I think the main thing is that we’re desperate to get back on track
and hopefully win the race. We are all quite grateful that we’ve only got a couple of days to
wait to get back onto the circuit and in terms of the data, we’ve actually got some pretty good data
and some good understanding from the last race. We’ve also got the simulator where we can do a
lot of good work preparing for Austria and that is going to be going on in the next day or two,
but ultimately it is the same for all the teams. If we had an extra week, we would make use of it,
but it is actually quite fun when you have them coming so thick and fast, it puts a
lot of pressure on people but it does keep it exciting. So, we are going to be busy for the
next couple of days, but hopefully we can arrive in Austria in a good and well prepared state.
Thank you for all of your questions. We are
going to be back in another weeks’ time after the Styrian Grand Prix.