Fahrerstimmen – Tag 3

It’s good to be back on the top step of the podium after a couple of difficult weekends. It was a hard-fought win and didn’t come easily. We lost the lead on the run to Eau Rouge but got it back on the opening lap. We looked in control but then lost it again when Leclerc was able to pit under the Virtual Safety Car. We kept calm though and slowly closed the gap down. He was very quick and, even after I passed him, it was a struggle to break overtake mode. We eventually did though and could bring the win home.

We saw how competitive several teams were again today. We need to keep working hard, keep performing, and keep scoring points. It’s going to be a long battle all the way to the end of the season. We will keep taking it one weekend at a time and try to do our best every time we get in the car.

I believed in the possibility of taking the win until the end. I had a good start, passing George (Russell) and Max (Verstappen) out of Eau Rouge with strong deployment. The Virtual Safety Car helped to put us in contention for the win, and it was really enjoyable to lead the race and fight for that position until the closing laps, even if it was down to a bit of luck on our side. Overall, we had good pace, which is something we didn\'t expect on a track such as Spa-Francorchamps. A big thank you to everyone at the track and back in Maranello for continuing to push so hard.

I think we had a very good race, and hopefully we can have more weekends like this. I had too much deployment from turn one to turn two, and when I looked at my battery, I knew that I was going to have a difficult run. We were then a bit unlucky with the VSC, and it affected the strategy and our ability to fight for P2 in the end. The Medium tyre was pretty decent, but we struggled a bit on the Hard tyres in terms of grip and had few balance limitations, so we just need to analyse why it was a bit trickier than expected. However, we had the car in a good window, and I think we can be happy with the whole weekend and pleased to be on the podium. Overall it was a good result and a pretty solid weekend!

The team did a really good job today, both with the strategy and the execution of the race, and the mechanics were excellent throughout the weekend, including during the pit stops. Given the damage, the five-second penalty and everything that happened yesterday, I\'m grateful to have come away with some points. It wasn\'t the smoothest weekend from my side, but we\'ll keep building and working hard to put together stronger weekends going forward.

We had good pace today, especially in the first stint, and the podium wasn\'t out of the question, which is a positive we can take away. However, it was certainly not a straightforward race for us. The damage we sustained after the contact with Charles Leclerc just made things much more difficult as we were losing a few tenths per lap. I struggled for the rest of that stint, and while we compensated a little for it in the second stint, the race was tougher than it needed to be.

We definitely need a bit more performance as it feels like we\'re just that one step behind which isn\'t the easiest position to be in. We\'re looking ahead now, and hopefully the new upgrades we plan to bring will help us close that gap and compete more consistently. Let\'s see what we can do in Hungary.

I\'m very happy with how today played out. We had a clear plan from the moment we arrived in Spa, so we were able to put everything into getting the most out of the race, and we did exactly that. From P21 to P6 is not easy, but the strategy was perfect and the pace in the car was strong, so it\'s been an all-round Team effort. With the Safety Car, we pitted early to give us options later on, and it worked out perfectly. Credit to the Team for that call. Going through the pack is always fun, especially with the pace we had, which let me keep the gap to Lando once he started to get closer. The goal yesterday was to get back into the points. We added a few more on top of that to make for a satisfying afternoon.

Mixed feelings today. The potential was extremely high this weekend in terms of my feeling for the car and the pace being strong enough to probably challenge for a podium finish. I felt very confident with the balance and knew exactly what the car was going to do, which is a huge positive for us going forward.

It\'s a slight shame about the result though everything that could have made our life difficult today, did. We were unlucky with the timing of the VSCs, which helped our rivals, and the unfortunate delay with a technical issue on the pit stop cost a significant amount of time which ultimately translates into track position and points. When you have the pace to achieve a great result but are held back by challenging factors like that, it\'s frustrating. We will now work to analyse what went wrong and learn from it before hitting track in Hungary.

I\'m extremely happy with today\'s result. I think we maximised everything we had this weekend, and that\'s down to an incredible effort from the whole team. To achieve this in front of our team members from our bases in Hinwil, Bicester and Neuburg makes it even more special: they\'ve worked so hard to get us where we are, and it\'s great to share this moment with them.

These consecutive points finishes are a huge boost for all of us. It\'s a great feeling to know we are in the position to deliver results like this and keep fighting in the top ten now. That\'s where we want to be, and where we belong, and we\'ll keep pushing to get more – starting from Budapest in a week\'s time, to wrap up the first part of the season on a high.

Bringing home points today is a great way to wrap up the weekend here in Belgium, especially after showing strong pace from the start. It was a lot of fun out there, and Gabi and I were really pushing each other throughout the race. I felt that we had the potential to finish P8 today, but credit to Gabi and Audi as they successfully took advantage of the Virtual Safety Car. Every weekend I\'m feeling more comfortable in the car. As a team we\'re working very collaboratively; understanding each other better all the time and continuing to develop the car. It\'s great to see all of this hard work translate into results on track. I\'m feeling confident ahead of racing in Hungary next week. I love the corners and fewer straights, so I\'m looking forward to racing at one of my favourite tracks on the calendar.

I\'m happy to score a point this afternoon in Belgium after finishing in P10. It was a long and eventful race, but also quite fun at the wheel with a lot of action happening. It was a good race for us, a good start to gain some places, which put ourselves up there and in reach of scoring points. I quite enjoyed the double overtake, which secured P10! That was down to a good run and slipstream and then I just had to try and go on the inside of Liam [Lawson] and then just ahead of Pierre to make the move. In general, we know where our fight is and we know where we are lacking pace. We were definitely a bit stronger here compared to some recent tracks. More progress will be made soon on our side but I am just glad, for now, we maximised what we could today. Next is Budapest, which is a very different kind of circuit compared to here.

It was a frustrating race for me, where we finished just outside the points. I had a tough start, not fast enough in the opening phase for some reason and lost some positions on the opening lap. After that, we had to try and recover some positions with the fight for the points amongst a number of teams and cars. We tried the undercut to get ahead of Racing Bulls but we had a relatively slow stop, which meant our out lap was in traffic and that impacted our chances of making it work. From my view, it felt like that might have changed our race had we had track position and been ahead of the Racing Bulls in that moment, so there are a few things for us to review and for me to understand. After that, lap after lap, there were so many energy deployment tactics and overtakes down the Kemmel Straight. Today, it did not go my way, but the bigger picture is the fact we are not quick enough. Gabriel [Bortoleto] and Arvid [Lindblad] were too far ahead and that has been a bit of a trend in recent weeks which we need to reverse soon. I\'ll have a few days to recover before full focus goes onto Budapest, the final race before the summer break

It wasn’t the easiest race today. We had a really strong start; probably our best of the season, but unfortunately we just didn’t have enough pace throughout the race. We started the weekend in a decent position, but as other teams found more performance through the race, we weren’t able to make the same step forward. We tried a few different modes to improve things, but unfortunately nothing made the difference we were hoping for. Despite that, there are still positives to take away. It’s been another encouraging weekend with regards to the car\'s development and I’m looking forward to having the full upgrade package on my car next week. Hungary is a very different track to Spa, so we hope to put ourselves back in the fight for more points.

There was a lot of fighting in the midfield today, but we paid the price for starting too far back and also losing a few positions at the start, which made the race even more difficult. From there, it was always going to be hard to recover.

The encouraging part is that our race pace was competitive and we were right in the mix throughout. The Virtual Safety Car gained us a few seconds, but it probably needed to last just a little longer. Instead, I came out right behind Pierre [Gasly] and Liam [Lawson], got caught up in that battle and, with our lack of straight-line speed, it was difficult to make any further progress. The pace itself actually felt quite good by our standards, so that\'s something we\'ll take away, even if we need to review a few other areas.

It\'s great to see Gabriel score points for the team. It\'s a well-deserved result and another positive outcome for everyone. Hopefully, we can build on that in Budapest, put together a clean weekend on my side of the garage and give ourselves the chance to fight further up the order.

Unfortunately, I got stuck in fourth gear before the incident and lost a lot of ground. Regarding the incident itself, I picked up a puncture, which is very unfortunate. I don’t know exactly what happened, but it’s disappointing, to be honest, because the car was quite fast. We were much closer to the Audis, which is a step ahead for this weekend. I think there are a lot of positives to take, mainly that the car feels good and it\'s much more fun to drive. The balance is much more connected, which means you can push it to its limits, and make fewer mistakes doing so. I think I’ve had a very clean weekend in terms of performance, and the race pace was consistent as well, which is good. So, we\'ll regroup for the next one.

It was a frustrating day today. We had a good start, and you begin to think you can keep up with the midfield, but our pace just dropped away. We\'ve had a super clean weekend and had stronger pace up until qualifying, where we made some changes that impacted our race pace today, leaving us with quite a slow car. We know other teams are progressing much faster than us and our Baku upgrade likely won\'t close this gap, but we\'ll do what we can to find more performance.

It was a race of two halves today. We had to start P19 after a penalty due to changing the ESME and got some damage to the front wing in the first lap when everyone bunched up into turn 1. Changing the front wing cost us additional time, but with the new wing, the car was in a much better place, and I had good pace until the end of the race, overtaking some rivals and closing the gap to the cars ahead.

Ultimately, we extracted everything we could from the car. While we know the gap is increasing to the midfield and our upgrades coming won’t completely fill this, we’ve got some good learnings we can take forward. On to Hungary.

It was the wrong place and wrong time for both Ollie and me on Lap 1, there\'s not much we could\'ve done. We were three wide, and I think Ollie had an issue, so everyone tried to avoid him. I went on the inside of Nico, let him past, and once Nico cleared, I was still on the inside and we touched. It was unfortunate, but it didn\'t impede either of our races. We struggled with the pace, and on my side we were still struggling with straight-line speed, lacking rear grip, and we were not quick at all. We need to do a better job in Budapest, and I hope we can have a similar car to what we had at Silverstone, or earlier in the year in Japan.

It was another challenging race for us, but we managed to finish with one car, which gives us valuable data to learn from. We still have work to do, particularly on reliability and tire degradation, but everyone in the team is giving everything to improve. We just need to keep pushing, because when the results eventually come, they’ll be even more rewarding. Hopefully Hungary will suit us a bit better, and if we can put everything together in qualifying, you never know what might be possible.

We did our best today, but we knew our limitations this weekend. We collected some valuable data for the team and are now focussed on Budapest. We will need to maximise all of our practice sessions next weekend and learn as much as we can about the new package.

It’s been another difficult weekend, and I leave Spa disappointed that we’ve had another race where we’ve not scored any points. We’ve had too many of those weekends recently, but we will reset again and see what we can do in Budapest. We want to go into the shutdown with positivity and hopefully we can do that with a better Grand Prix in Hungary.

The issue we faced with our boost on the opening lap was different to what we’ve been trying to solve earlier in the weekend. I made a good start and was in a decent position to fight for the lead but didn’t have the speed we expected on the run to Turn 5. I was overtaken by several cars behind and the incident with Lewis (Hamilton) followed.

We are working flat out as a team to improve our reliability. We know it has cost us too many points so far this season and we’re all determined to get on top of it. It’s frustrating for everyone but I know just how hard everyone at Brackley and Brixworth is pushing to improve it.

Our pace was pretty much where we expected it to be today. We knew this track was always going to be difficult for us and it was a tough race from the start. Towards the end I started to feel something with the gearbox, so we retired the car to investigate it. Hopefully we can be a bit more competitive in Hungary and have a stronger weekend there.

It was an unfortunate end to the race. I had a rear inboard suspension failure and we had to retire the car. We are still investigating the reasons why. It was a tricky weekend as we struggled a lot with straightline speed – even in the race I was missing a couple of tenths and we couldn’t fight for longer with the Haas of Esteban [Ocon], but hopefully we are able to sort it out for Hungary. I’m looking forward to it, coming back stronger there.