Monaco Grand Prix 2018 – Race


Race Notes

  • Sergey Sirotkin finished 16th and Lance Stroll 17th in the Monaco Grand Prix
  • Both cars started on the hypersoft Pirelli tyre, with Sergey starting 13th and Lance 17th
  • Both cars made clean starts with each gaining a position on lap one
  • On lap seven, Sergey was handed a 10-second stop-go penalty for a tyre infringement on the grid, and re-joined the field in P20
  • Two laps later, Lance suffered a puncture and limped back to the pits for a front wing and tyre change, relegating him to last
  • On lap 19, Sergey pitted for a set of ultrasoft tyres, before pitting again on lap 49 for a set of supersoft tyres
  • Lance suffered more misfortune with another puncture on lap 34, and pitted for a set of hypersofts
  • On lap 59, Lance made his third and final stop for another set of hypersoft tyres

Paddy Lowe, Chief Technical Officer:  A hugely disappointing day because we’d had a pretty promising weekend so far, certainly with Sergey starting in a better grid position than we’ve had more recently. Unfortunately, we suffered a wheel assembly problem on the grid with Sergey’s car which meant we fitted the wheels after the three-minute deadline. Consequently, he was handed a 10-second stop-go penalty which put him half a lap adrift of the pack. His race was ruined from that point on. He spent the afternoon in that situation suffering constant blue flags. We converted to a two-stop strategy as that is actually the quickest race if you’re not holding a position. It was good to see that he could put in some quick laps at the end whilst in free air. On Lance’s side, he had a puncture on lap nine due to the brakes becoming too hot, which overheated the rim and caused the failure. We failed to control that on the second set of tyres and he suffered another puncture. The issue was managed for the rest of the race, but with so many pitstops and blue flags, Lance was in no position to make any progress.

Sergey Sirotkin: It’s not ideal to finish where we did but, in some ways, it was a good race. We had a car that was definitely allowing me to fight. I think we had the pace, the car really had the pace and I think we had a good chance to be in the points, but a bit of bad luck with the penalty following what went wrong on the grid. I think we showed a good improvement in qualifying. We showed a good improvement in the pace within the race itself. We’ll just keep working, harder and harder, and we’ll get there.

Lance Stroll: It was a pretty terrible day. I got a puncture on lap nine and lost a bunch of time, like a lap, just getting to the pits. After that I was busy letting cars through with blue flags as I was a lap down. Then we had temperature problems all race, and I was told to give gaps and let cars by, so there was not much of an opportunity and we just weren’t racing today. Looking forward I am very excited about my home race next and hope we can have a much better weekend in Canada.

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