Fahrerstimmen – Tag 3

I'm incredibly happy to take the win at the final race here in Zandvoort, but it was a real fight. For the first half of the race, especially on the Soft tyre, I honestly didn't think a win was possible. I struggled a lot with the pace and balance, and it felt like a bit of a repeat of Saturday's struggles. However, once we put the Hard tyres on, the car came alive. I felt much more comfortable, I could push, and we were able to put Mercedes under pressure, forcing them into an early stop, which ultimately opened the door for us. 

The team's strategy was perfect, and that gave me the opportunity on fresh tyres to attack while Kimi was battling with Lewis. I knew that was my one and only chance, and I had to make it stick. Committing to the outside of Turn 1 was the move that won us the race. Despite the win, I'm not fully satisfied. We still have weaknesses, particularly in the slow-speed corners, and we need to improve if we want to fight for the championship. I'll be pushing the team harder than ever because the work doesn't stop here; we need more performance.

I am disappointed to have led so many laps today and not won. Unfortunately, the pace wasn’t quite there, and that’s a shame. P2 was ultimately the maximum we could have done, though, given that, so we must be happy coming away with that and a double podium secured. It is a great result for the team with George doing a brilliant job to keep the Ferraris behind and take P3.

We made two good starts and gained places at both. That gave us belief we could fight for victory, but I didn’t have the feeling with the car on the second set of Hard tyres and that was when Lando (Norris) was able to get past. I was a little nervous in the closing stages after we pitted under the Virtual Safety Car, but it turned out well. We were able to have both cars finish ahead of the Ferraris and extend our lead in the Constructors’ Championship, which is a good feeling leaving Zandvoort.

We did our best today, and it was clear that we were going to have a tough time of it defending from Lando (Norris) and the Ferraris, who were incredibly fast. The field is even more competitive than at any point during the season; that said, the pace of both McLaren and Ferrari has surprised us. To come away with a Sprint victory and a P3 is a solid return, therefore, on what has been a challenging weekend from a pace perspective.

My race wasn’t the smoothest. I lost a couple of positions early on, but was able to fight my way back to P3. That became P2 when Kimi pitted under the Virtual Safety Car, but ultimately, Kimi was ahead of me before that, so the position was his. It was clear that we couldn’t cost ourselves any time fighting, as we needed to protect from the Ferraris behind, too. If we had, we would have likely lost a lot of time, and I would have lost the podium. In the end, we were able to maximise the result for the team, and that’s positive.

Overall, it was a solid race and despite the qualifying positions, we had good pace today and brought some important points home for the team. I’m really grateful to everyone back at the factory, who continue to push and find small gains through the upgrades we’re bringing to the car. The team did a great job both with the strategy and in the pit lane, and the mechanics once again were excellent. It wasn’t an easy race but we were competitive. 

While it was a good race, we know we need to do more to make sure we’re maximising every opportunity to stay in the championship fight. We’ll go away over the next couple of weeks and see what else we can do to make sure we come back from Monza strong and ready.

Our pace was strong, and I believed in it until the very end because we weren’t that far off George (Russell). We didn’t really have luck on our side today, as the timing of the Virtual Safety Car was not ideal for our race. On the other hand, we did a good job with tyre management and I enjoyed the overtake on Oscar (Piastri). Our main limitation was probably our starting position, so we have to review and understand where we can improve our qualifying pace.

I’m excited for Monza next. I have really great memories which I will never forget from there, and it’s just a really special place for us, where we meet so many of our tifosi year after year. I hope we can make good memories there again this year.

A frustrating afternoon with a disappointing result but still some points on the board. The main positive we can take away is the start and the first lap after the Red Flag, where the car felt good and we were able to make up positions. The first stint felt reasonable, but from the second stint onwards, the pace was simply not there, and it became a real struggle. 

We will review the entire weekend and analyse to understand why we experienced such a significant performance drop-off. A slow pit stop didn't help, but the fundamental issue was the lack of pace, which is something we’ll work on ahead of Monza. That’s the priority now, to dig into the data with the team to find the root cause and ensure we can move forward in a more positive direction for the upcoming races.

It was a pretty lonely race for me today. We just didn’t have the pace to fight with the guys in front so it was tricky. I’m happy I got points for the Team. I knew coming into the weekend it’d be difficult, especially at a circuit like Zandvoort where you need a lot of confidence in the car, but I feel like we extracted everything we could. It was a shame to see what happened to Max. That part of the track was incredibly slippery, on slick tyres it was so easy to lose the car there. I was right behind him, so it was a pretty scary moment. I’m glad he’s okay. It’s never easy stepping into an entirely new car, but the Team did a good job in making me feel comfortable, and I’m grateful for the opportunity.

It was a shame how my race ended today, but I am all okay. It looked like it was dry in that spot, so I tried to accelerate and it just caught me out. I was a bit unlucky, lost the car and went into the wall unfortunately. We didn’t have the pace this weekend to fight for the win, which is something that we still need to work on. I have mixed emotions as it was positive seeing so many fans here for one final time but obviously a huge shame and quite disappointing to not finish the race. Luckily, we have such positive memories here and were able to achieve great things at this track, so I want to thank the fans for all the support. It has been something really special and I hope they have enjoyed it as well over all these years.

It was a very good race, although the end of the first lap was quite scary. I saw what was happening ahead of me and just reacted instinctively, so I was relieved to avoid the incident. From there, we had a clean race, a good strategy and some fun battles along the way. It feels really good to come away with points today. They are important for us in the championship and give everyone in the team a lift, while also confirming that the work we are putting in is taking us in the right direction. It wasn‘t the easiest weekend so it feels even better to come away with a strong result and some valuable points today.

It's great to finish in the points here in Zandvoort. I wasn’t expecting it, so it’s a credit to the team for maximising everything we had. We still have some driveability issues, but this weekend is another step forward. We’ll take this momentum and keep pushing to get the most out of the car.

It was quite a frustrating race in the end, even if our start was very good and just what we needed after starting from P11. We managed to get up to P9, then had to avoid Max [Verstappen] at the final corner. After the second restart, following the red flag, again, we did quite well to hold onto P8 and from there it became quite tough and frantic. Clearly Racing Bulls are our direct rivals and they had a plan to maximise their race and impact ours. That was to be expected but it was an annoying one behind the wheel! It is a long season, I'll remember it, and the fight in the Championship is definitely on. I'm glad we had upgrades this weekend which has put us in a much more competitive position and that is reflected in the points we have been able to score. We have a lot to assess from the weekend but I am already looking forward to Monza and continuing the on-track battle.

I did everything I could today and I really enjoyed it. I’ve missed being out there, racing wheel-to-wheel and making overtakes, so it was great to experience that again. We were really close to the points and just missed out, which was a shame, but overall it’s been an incredible few days. The team has supported me so much throughout the week, and I’ve been able to get up to speed quite quickly, so a huge thank you to everyone for giving me this opportunity. I’ll take away some unforgettable memories from this weekend. Most importantly, I hope Isack has a speedy recovery.

It’s a bit of a shame about today’s race. We had a good start but was given a drive-through penalty due to a Yellow Flag Infringement, which effectively took us out of the fight for the rest of the race. With all the debris flying around, I was just focused on holding my line and avoiding anything on track. Once we got going again, I think it was probably one of the best races I’ve done this year in terms of pace, commitment to overtakes and helping the team where I could. Overall I think we made good progress, we made some changes that helped us become more competitive as the weekend progressed. It’s disappointing not to come away with any points, but we’ll now turn our focus to preparing for the next race in Monza.

It's been a bit of a disappointing end to the weekend for us. We had some issues at the start that unfortunately didn’t allow us to maximise our grid position; on top of that, once I saw the smoke for Max [Verstappen]'s car, I made a small steering correction and lost my car - thankfully, I managed to keep it out of the wall. The team did a fantastic job trying to put me in the best possible position to make it back up the field, so it's a shame we couldn't get the result we wanted, although it was good to see Nico bringing some more points home today. Our pace was good, and I was happy with how I felt with the car up until yesterday, so we'll take these positives and move on to Monza in two weeks.

A challenging race for us today, which was made even more difficult after the drive through penalty we received for the incident on the opening lap. I had a very strong start, overtook four cars, and was up into the points. From then on it was looking like it would be a good race for us, but after the penalty our day was compromised. I find it harsh and it is one we will review and try to learn and understand further. After that, as I said, our race was not easy. We struggled for tyre grip, and this held back our pace afterwards as we tried to come back, finishing in P14, where I started. It is positive that Pierre finished in P10 and was able to score a point with the upgraded package. I will have the same upgrades at the next round in Monza and I'm looking forward to racing with it and really being in contention for scoring points.

We haven’t had any reliability issues this year, this is the first one, and we think it’s related to the PU, but we’ll need to look into it first to properly understand. Both cars had issues, so neither of us finished the race, but it wasn’t going to change the world as we weren’t in point scoring positions anyway. The updates are coming, they’re needed, so we’ll see what the impact is.

I think starting from the pit lane was the right decision, and we made some good progress throughout the race. Our pace was strong, and after being stuck behind Valtteri on the first lap, we managed to make the overcut work and move ahead. Unfortunately, we were a little unlucky with the Virtual Safety Car, which took away an opportunity we had been building towards. 

Still, we managed to finish ahead of Williams, so there are positives to take from the race. We always give our best, and today we showed some good pace and made progress.

First of all, sorry to Alex and the team for the contact at the end of the race. I had very worn hard tyres and braked over the bump in turn 1, locked up and couldn’t stop the car in time. It was obviously the last thing I wanted to end an already tough weekend. Again, apologies to him and the team.

Overall, we struggled to get into a good rhythm throughout the weekend and had to run a number of tests to explore the issues we were having, which put us on the backfoot and meant we weren't able to fight for any more today. The positive is that we've found some solutions and have good learnings to take forward to the upcoming races, so we'll look to come back stronger in Monza.

In clean air the car felt good today, not far off the midfield pace, so there are positives to take. The moment with Carlos was just one of those racing incidents – we were going for the same corner and he locked up. It's not how we wanted to end the weekend, and not what the team needs, but it is what it is and we'll discuss together as we always do.

We need to review our strategy today as we were fighting Fernando and he finished ahead – I think we pitted too early on the first stop, reacting to a potential undercut rather than running our own race. That left us catching a lot of blue flags and stuck in dirty air, which made my second stint messy. We'll review everything as a team and look forward to a cleaner weekend in Monza.

We picked up some damage early on, which compromised the performance of the car. We had no pace and were sliding around a lot, so we stopped early for the hard tyre, but unfortunately nothing helped. There’s still a lot of work to do to improve the driveability of the car.

We had a good start and a good first lap, and then of course the red flag came out. After that, the engine turned off on the formation lap, and because we haven’t had any time with the car yet, we’re not entirely sure what the issue was, but on my side, I felt a total switch-off, which is a shame. It’s been a really horrible weekend, not the one we wanted to come back to, but we have some updates coming next week, and I really hope they can better our performance.

Unfortunately, we suffered from a hydraulic issue that was affecting the rear wing. Checo had the same issue earlier this weekend and now it’s hampered us with only a handful of laps to go, which is a shame, but I’m confident the team will be able to resolve it. In the race itself, the first stint was decent as we were close to the Williams, but there’s some learnings to be had from our second stint as we analyze everything from this weekend and turn our focus to Monza.