Verstappen and Perez finish 1-2 at Austrian Grand Prix sprint

I had a bit of a slow start today, it could have been spicy between Checo and I but he said that he couldn’t see me, and I trust his word. We’re all good, we had a chat after the race and all is cleared up, there’s no need to make a big deal about it. After we settled into the race, we knew that 24 laps on the intermediate tyres would be quite long, so it was all about managing the tyres whilst trying to drive fast, which is not always easy. I was able to extend the gap and then towards the end of the race I had a few cars around me on slicks. Of course, we had to stay alert, but I think the race went pretty well today. It’s of course incredibly sad about what happened to Dilano today, he had the same dreams that we had when we were at that age. It’s sad for everyone, his family, the team and the world of motorsport. There’s a lot more that can be done to protect drivers.

It was a great Team result for all of us. At the beginning, Max and I got a bit closer than we should have, there was a bit of misjudgement from both sides, but we have spoken about it and it is all good. Later in the race, after passing Nico in the Haas, it was all about making sure that we made it until the end as the tyres were getting too hot as the circuit dried, but we got the result we wanted. Tomorrow, starting from P15, although overtaking will be difficult, we will give it a go and see what we are able to do and try our best to recover as many positions as possible.  I think yesterday we showed very good pace and we are comfortable with the car. I am still feeling unwell and unfortunately far from one hundred percent but I am looking forward to tomorrow to see what we can do. I also want to take a moment to remember Bob Fernley, who was a massive person in my life – a guy that I shared so many years and so many good moments with. I want to wish Audrey and his family the very best. It is really sad and we had a lot of happy memories.

I don’t know what to say about today’s Shootout, in the end, we just didn’t have enough pace. I tried to maximise our opportunity, but our lap time was deleted for the second time by millimetres, so there was definitely frustration. 
As for the Sprint Race, we finished only P16. It was tricky out there, and there wasn’t much we could do today. I wasn’t able to maximise my performance and extract the maximum out of our car, as we are especially lacking straight-line speed. The pace on the intermediate tyre was ok, but we are quite slow when it’s between dry and wet conditions. We’ve found similar limitations from other tracks, so we take the knowledge from past experiences, reset ourselves, and shift our focus to tomorrow. The pack is still tight, so you always have to be perfect, and you never know what can happen.

The beginning of the Sprint Qualifying was good; the car felt better than yesterday, but the end of SQ2 was very unfortunate. There was lots of traffic towards the last turn, which turned out to be slight chaos, so we lost our final attempt at getting through to SQ3.
Then, talking about this afternoon’s race, no one had the chance to run the wet compound tyres this weekend, so it was tricky for everyone out there, experiencing new circumstances. I had a poor start, lots of wheelspin and then faced high and early degradation on the intermediate tyre. Given our high degradation we maybe could’ve boxed one lap earlier, but I think we made the right call in the end. I felt my pace was strong but got stuck behind Logan (Sargeant), who had a strong straight-line performance. As a team, we are united and trying to extract the maximum, but this weekend we have been lacking overall performance, and it just doesn’t seem like it’s enough.