Race Notes
- Lance Stroll and Sergey Sirotkin were both forced to retire from the 2018 German Grand Prix
- Lance started the race from P17 and Sergey started from P12 on the Pirelli soft tyre
- Lance pitted on lap 29 followed by Sergey a lap later, both for the Pirelli medium tyre
- The Safety Car was deployed on lap 52 following an incident from Vettel
- After the rain started to fall, both drivers managed the tricky conditions before eventually pitting for the Intermediate Pirelli tyre
- Sergey retired during his first out lap due to an engine oil leak, closely followed by Lance on lap 55 due to a brake issue
Paddy Lowe, Chief Technical Officer: That was a disappointing result for us today. It was a particularly tricky race with the rain and these are always a test of the race operations and the drivers’ responses to rapidly changing conditions. I think we called it pretty well and would have been in comparatively good positions and possibly in the points, but both the cars broke down for entirely different reasons. This is a particular blow as if there is one thing we have achieved this year it is being significantly more reliable than last year, with only one other car related retirement this year. Sergey had an oil fire due to an oil leak somewhere in the engine circuit, but we are still investigating this, and in Lance’s case he had a failure in the rear brake circuit, losing all control of the rear brakes. In both cases it was clearly necessary to stop the car straightaway.
Lance Stroll: I had to retire as I lost brakes. Qualifying looked strong yesterday, but today the pace wasn’t great. But I was happy with my race. At one stage we looked like we were in a pretty promising position, but then the rain started to come in. Looking at the results, Hartley scored a point and we were in front of him before we stopped for the inters and then obviously we had to retire with the brake failure. However, at a certain stage we were looking pretty good. It is a shame we could not be there at the end to capitalise on some of the mixed conditions.
Sergey Sirotkin: It was a good race and I had to fight quite a lot at the start. I had some good fights which I won and others which I unfortunately lost as I was not in position to do so. But once the race settled down it was a good race and we managed the tyre well. The pace was reasonable and when the rain started, I was very confident and closed the gap between cars ahead of me quite quickly. When the safety car was deployed I felt it was our chance but unfortunately, I had a call to stop the car immediately.
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