Singapore Grand Prix 2018 – Race


Race Notes

  • Lance Stroll finished 14th and Sergey Sirotkin 19th in the Singapore Grand Prix
  • Sergey started on the ultrasoft Pirelli tyre in P19, with Lance P20 on the soft Pirelli tyre
  • The Safety Car was immediately deployed on the first lap
  • Sergey picked up debris so made an early stop, switching to the soft tyre on lap 3 as the safety car ended
  • Both drivers made a clean restart, Lance climbed to P14, with Sergey behind in P15
  • Lance pitted on lap 40 for the ultrasoft tyre whilst Sergey pitted again on lap 45

Paddy Lowe, Chief Technical Officer: It was a normal long race in Singapore and full of events. Sergey picked up a bit of wheel rim from Ocon’s accident which meant we had to take an early stop. We put the soft tyre on, planning to go to the end. Sergey did a fantastic job, managing the tyre and his pace, keeping traffic behind him under a lot of pressure. He ultimately got caught up in an impact with Perez, and that ruined his race otherwise he could have been looking at quite a good finishing position. On Lance’s side, we took advantage of the traffic and the different queues on the circuit to optimise his pitstop which gave him a better track position than we could have hoped for at the start. He was able to come in 15thon the road and inherited 14th due to a time penalty for Grosjean, which we were chasing until the end. So real congratulations to the team, another two cars home in a very tough race, and especially to the drivers; they were driving at the maximum for nearly two hours and got the best they could from the car.

Lance Stroll: I will have to watch the race, as I don’t really know what happened around me, but I think there was quite a bit of chaos, so probably I benefited from that. I am really happy with the end result as 14th was a great result for the pace we had yesterday, and throughout the weekend. It wasn’t easy – I would say more mentally than physically. I felt pretty good in the car as physically I had prepared. Mentally I am on the edge with no room for error. It wasn’t easy as every millimetre counts round here and one millimetre too much is contact with the wall. I was trying to get everything out of the car on every lap, as for sure 61 laps round a track like this are very challenging. I pulled it off, so I am happy.

Sergey Sirotkin: It was a fight. I fought all my way through, I was fighting and squeezing every single moment. We were in a good position at the beginning of the race, and up to the point of contact with the Force India car. This caused a lot of damage to my car and after that it was more about survival. It’s a difficult track to overtake, so I still fought as hard as I could to protect the car and keep my position, but lap after lap, it was becoming more difficult and the car was falling apart. I gave everything in terms of myself and with the car to bring the best performance home.

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