A Tough Day At Monza For Honda Power
MonzaA challenging day at Monza resulted in three Honda-powered cars failing to finish as Sergio Picked up points with a battling fifth place.
A challenging day at Monza resulted in three Honda-powered cars failing to finish as Sergio picked up points with a battling fifth place.
After his crash at the start of the Sprint, we opted to take a new power unit in Pierre’s car as he was already due to start from the back of the grid, with the new specification of Energy Store requiring a pit lane start. Pierre reported issues on his reconnaissance laps but was able to take the start, which was unfortunately slightly better than Yuki as a braking problem was discovered and couldn’t be fixed on the grid.
A valiant attempt from the mechanics ultimately failed as Yuki was unable to start, while Pierre’s race lasted only a handful of laps before he was also forced to retire on what turned out to be a painful day for Scuderia AlphaTauri.
Max had been overtaken for the lead by Daniel Ricciardo on the run to Turn 1 but followed the McLaren closely and was looking to use strategy to regain first place when a slow pit stop on lap 23 hampered his chances and dropped him back in the pack.
Still in the mix for victory, Max was then fighting with Lewis Hamilton as the Mercedes emerged from his pit stop and the two collided at the first chicane, taking both of them out of the race.
That just left Sergio to take up the fight for Red Bull Racing and the team reacted well in the Safety Car period to make his one and only pit stop for hard tyres so that he rejoined in fourth place.
After the race, the stewards awarded a three-place grid drop at the Russian Grand Prix to Max, following the contact between himself and Lewis.
This was a very disappointing day for us with three of the four Honda-powered cars failing to finish. Checo actually had a good race to come from ninth on the grid to cross the finish line third, but a penalty meant he was classified fifth, but those points are important for the championship. It was a shame that both AlphaTauris were out of the race almost immediately and then Max had to retire after his collision with Lewis. However, there is still a long way to go this season and we can expect a tough fight for the championship all the way to the end, so we will start preparing for the next race right away. Finally, I would like to offer our congratulations to our former partners McLaren on their brilliant 1-2 finish.
It was a very eventful race and a real shame to miss out on the podium. With the penalty, I think we hoped for a wider view in the sense that it was my corner and I was ahead of Charles, but it is what it is and we tried to recover. From our side we did the best possible race we could as a Team but overtaking was impossible today and it was really difficult to keep ahead of the cars behind. McLaren were really quick and difficult to beat, they’ve been solid this weekend and especially on the straights they were hard to follow. They had very strong traction so at no point could I be a threat to them, but as a Team this wasn’t our track, we weren’t so strong here so now we move on and look forward to Russia. There is still a long way to go in this championship.
We were racing for position today but you need two people to work together to make the corner and Lewis just kept squeezing until there wasn’t room anymore for two cars and that’s when we crashed. When he exited the pits, he started to squeeze me going into Turn 1 so I had to use the green part of the track. It was very tight but there was room for me to go around the outside and then I was pushed onto the orange sausage kerb. I was there to try and race hard but fair. I don't fully agree with the penalty as I believe it was a racing incident. It’s very unfortunate what happened today but we are both professionals and so we will move on.
We had a brilliant start to the weekend, with another strong Qualifying performance, but then after yesterday’s Sprint Qualifying it’s all been very disappointing. We knew there was something wrong in the initial laps, but we weren’t able to get it fixed before the race. We don’t know the exact issue yet but unfortunately, we had to retire the car. It’s our home race so it’s hard to lose both cars here today. We know that the performance of the car is there, so we need to just work hard and prepare for the next race.
On the lap to the grid we found a mechanical issue with the car. We tried to fix this on the grid, but it wasn’t possible, so we brought the car back into the garage to try and sort it ahead of the race. My mechanics did a great job trying to get it fixed, but unfortunately I wasn’t able to start. It’s tough not to get more laps and experience in this car, but we need to turn the page and my full focus will now be on Russia.